Rebuilding
by hybrid2
Summary: Sequel to Recovery. The Esthar Garden is released for a welcome break, but the Instructors don't get one all the same.Sorry about the long wait. Finished.
1. Exhaustion

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I have the pictures of my original characters on my system, so if you want to see the folks you aren't familiar with, go to thao5.tripod.com/galleries/mydraws, and at the end of that address, type in the name of the character '.jpg' and you should see them.  
  
~  
  
  
Chapter 1  
  
"I am sooo glad that Lynne, Selphie and Zell are in charge of keeping the youngsters busy after classes," Maria sighed, sitting in a plush chair in what was affectionately called the 'teacher's lounge.'  
  
"They can just barely manage it as it is," Quistis shuddered from her seat nearby.  
  
"Which makes me wonder," Xia looked up from the book she was taking notes from, "How did our instructors keep up with us?"  
  
"Simple," Eric leaned against a table in the room, "There are more instructors in the other three Gardens than there is here in Cetra Garden."  
  
"There are only thirteen of us," Xia nodded, "And at least twice that many for each gender in the other three."  
  
"Doesn't help any that all the kids think they have to go here because the heroes of the battle with Ultimecia are here," Maria shrugged, then rolled her shoulders, "Ugh, now that I've had my little sit down, I have that tutoring session to suffer through."  
  
The dark-haired woman stood and left the room. Irvine slumped through the door as she let it close, "An' I thought that havin' to clean my own gun was hell!"  
  
Quistis laughed, "Now you know how Eric, Maria, Lynne and I have all felt!"  
  
"Ugh," Irvine shuddered as he collapsed into the heavily padded chair that Maria had vacated, "I'd have just as soon not have known."  
  
"We really weren't given much choice," Xia groaned, "But I certainly can't wait until this place is complete, then we'll have help!"  
  
"Maybe," Eric snorted, "They might just decide that since we've already survived one year, and are guaranteed to survive at least one more, we won't need the help."  
  
"What?" Xia sent a shocked look at Eric.  
  
"Then how the heck are we gonna deal with the next set that comes in this year?" Irvine drawled, "Do they think we're all superhuman?" he dropped his head against the back of the chair, "I just wanna find a nice secluded spot, an disappear off the face of the planet."  
  
"Good luck there," Quistis rolled her eyes, "If you find one, let me know!"  
  
"I'm just waiting for Zell or Lynne to have breakdowns," Xia sighed, "Those two really have it bad, with all the littlest ones using them for jungle gyms, and hide-and-go-seekers."  
  
"They're more likely to have the breakdowns because of the first aid classes," Irvine rubbed his forehead, "Those littluns still think that the words 'boy' and 'girl' are followed immediately by 'yuck!' An Selphie's not helpin' any."  
  
"So what happened to our triumvirate of leaders?" Xia looked at Quistis, "Are they still locked up in the Headmaster's office, trying to figure out those reams of paperwork?"  
  
"It's not easy translating Cid-speak, Shumi-speak, and Lagunese," Quistis shook her head, "Kiros is working on the Lagunese, while Squall and Max are struggling with Cid-speak and Shumi-speak. They've been working at it for five hours, and they aren't even a quarter of the way through!"  
  
"That's some encrypted text," Eric snorted, then laughed, "Maybe when we give the children their lessons for decryption, we should use these things."  
  
The other three laughed at his joke.  
  
"Have you gotten your monthly letter?" Xia sat up in her chair, "How's Merinda doing?"  
  
"She's learned her alphabet," Eric laughed a bit more, "And actually wrote part of the letter. Her handwriting, at four, is better than mine ever will be!"  
  
Irvine snorted, "I've read yours, it's not hard to get better!"  
  
"Mother's thinking fairly seriously of sending Mer to live here," Eric shook his head, "But I told her that she couldn't live here unless she were a cadet, and she couldn't try for that until she was nine. She's still got five years."  
  
"I'd love to hear more about Merinda," Quistis stood slowly from the squishy chair, "But I have a class. I have to co-teach this one with Seifer, so wish me luck. He'll contradict everything I say just because I said it."  
  
The others rolled their eyes and grinned.  
  
~  
  
  
  
Yeah, nothing's happening now, but I think that's gonna change. After all, there are the encrypted papers to figure out... And a whole bunch of people whose viewpoint as teachers that haven't been seen...  
  
I hope those questions get answered... 


	2. Busy Work

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I have the pictures of my original characters on my system, so if you want to see the folks you aren't familiar with, go to thao5.tripod.com/galleries/mydraws, and at the end of that address, type in the name of the character '.jpg' and you should see them.  
  
~  
  
  
Chapter 2  
  
"How did we get cornered into this again?" the darkly skinned man rubbed his temples, a killer headache building between them.  
  
The other two men in the room snorted or shrugged.  
  
"Hell if I know," Squall muttered, "But it's not the first time it's happened to me."  
  
"I've just about got this crazy thing figured out," the auburn-haired man growled, "Except for all of these insane, loopy things!"  
  
He held it out for Squall to see, and the brunette muttered, "Those are insane. Aren't they just doodles?"  
  
"It would certainly explain it," Max looked at them again, "Actually, I think you're right."  
  
"I just wish we could get done with this damned mess," Squall shook his head and returned to ciphering.  
  
"nh," Max set the original copy in a painfully small pile, and then pulled his translation of it out of the notebook, placing it on an even smaller pile, "How is it that they can volunteer us for this, and then they complain when we don't eat regularly?"  
  
"Helifino," Kiros muttered quickly under his breath.  
  
Someone knocked on the door, and then opened it.  
  
"I hope you're all decent," Quistis laughed, carrying a tray in her hands.  
  
"What did you expect," Kiros wrinkled his nose, "We were taking so long because we were doing three ways?"  
  
"Well," Quistis paused, "Actually, that was a question among some of the others."  
  
"If you're going to complain," Max snapped, "Then help out."  
  
"I can't," Quistis giggled, leaving the tray on the table between the three men, "Because that would just encourage them to the idea."  
  
All three rolled their eyes.  
  
"AW, get out!" Max looked up long enough to throw a mock glare her way, then returned to the next file he had to redo.  
  
~  
  
"So how did they take the joke?" Irvine drawled as Quistis reached the others.  
  
"Actually, I didn't tell it," Quistis shrugged.  
  
"Aw, come on, Quisty!" Irvine whined, "Why not?"  
  
"Because they responded with the punch line before I could bring it up," Quistis flopped into a chair.  
  
"Wait," Irvine paled.  
  
"They've worked almost twelve hours straight, and you're worried that they've actually been," Maria shuddered, "Sheesh, Kinneas, you're a perv!"  
  
"Nah," Selphie giggled madly around her joke, "He's just jealous 'cause he ain't in on it!"  
  
Irvine's face flushed a deep red, "HEY!"  
  
"Well," Xia smirked, "After all the comments you've made, you ought to have been prepared for it."  
  
Zell slipped through the door, with Edgar and Lynne following, "Finally, they got the point!"  
  
"I never would have thought that kids could be so silly," Lynne muttered.  
  
"When you're trying to teach CPR to seven and eight-year-olds, it doesn't really work," Edgar groaned, "When this place is properly functioning, we should be able to teach it later, like, when they're fifteen!"  
  
"That sounds like a ton of fun," Xia smiled, "What was their problem, the dummies?"  
  
"No," Zell groaned, "It was the fact that they might have to use it at a later date on someone who wasn't one of the plastic dummies."  
  
"Shouldn't someone go rescue those three from the paperwork?" Maria poked a finger out toward the office Quistis had just come from.  
  
"Seifer said he would in about an hour," Quistis leaned against the chair, "And I trust him because he's learned not to be snide around Kiros."  
  
"What happened?" Lynne blinked.  
  
"Seifer started to make fun of Kiros, and then Kiros promptly shut him up with a real stinger! To bad I can't remember it."  
  
"I asked him if the beads ever hit him in the face when he swung his head too fast," Seifer paused in the room for a minute, "And he asked me why my ego hadn't yet suffocated me."  
  
"And that's a zinger?" Lynne snorted, "I don't see how."  
  
"Most people just fluster up and get all uptight," Siefer shook his head, grinning slightly, "That was the first time someone had thrown one right back. So I don't pester him."  
  
"Pity none of the rest of us can get off so lightly," Zell muttered under his breath.  
  
"What's that Chicken-Wuss?" Seifer grinned when the blonde flared up.  
  
"Aw leave him alone, sour puss," Edgar groaned, "We really don't need him riled right now, after all, he, Lynne and Selphie have to talk the children into going to sleep soon."  
  
"I get the point," Seifer smirked, and then headed out the door, "I think I'll go give the half-hour warning."  
  
~  
  
  
  
This is starting off about as slowly as the first did. Maybe slower....  
  
I hope those questions get answered... 


	3. Visiting Dignitaries

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I have the pictures of my original characters on my system, so if you want to see the folks you aren't familiar with, go to thao5.tripod.com/galleries/mydraws, and at the end of that address, type in the name of the character '.jpg' and you should see them.  
  
I'm not sure if they use the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. calendar, so I'm going to modify it slightly. Mon. is Moon day, Tues. is Tyr's day, Wed. is Odin's, Thurs. is Thor's, Fri. is Freya's, Sat. is Saturn's, and Sunday will remain the same or be called seventh day... I'm not sure.   
~  
  
Chapter 3  
  
"Finally got the last of these done," Kiros sighed as he finished the pile of Lagunese papers.  
  
"You are going to help with the rest of the files," Squall didn't even look up from his file.  
  
"After I check the daily message box," Kiros stood, and cracked the majority of the bones in his body as he did so, causing both of the younger men to flinch.  
  
A knocking on the door accompanied Kiros' accessing the system for updated information, so when Seifer walked through the door, he was among the first to learn that they had a surprise visitor due the next day.  
  
"Did anyone else know that Rinoa Heartilly and General Caraway are on their way here?" Kiros looked up, "They'll be here at 0600 hours tomorrow."  
  
"Actually," Seifer looked at the timepiece on the wall, "That's 0600 hours today."  
  
"It's morning already?" Kiros looked up, and peered at the timepiece, "Well all the same, we need to tell the others about the change in plans."  
  
Max blinked, "Oh, damn, that's right! We actually have a class to teach on Odin's day!"  
  
"And why aren't you all trying to catch sleep while you can?" Seifer snorted, "Or do you want to exhaust yourselves. Not that I care, but you guys frying would seriously cut our ranks as instructors, and things are bad enough as it is."  
  
"It's not like we have time," Squall closed a file, then stood, "After all, there isn't anyone volunteering to help with this."  
  
"It's not like we don't because we don't want to," Seifer snorted, "Though that's part of it too, but we can't either."  
  
"Sure," Max picked up a file and tossed it at the just slightly taller blonde, "Like you guys don't have spare time."  
  
"Considering how long it's taken you three to figure out," Seifer glanced at the stack, "ten files worth, do you think we'd do any better?"  
  
"Who knows?" Kiros grinned, "Try it, and you just might help us more than you hinder."  
  
"I wouldn't count on it," Max said under his breath.  
  
"I heard that," Seifer smirked.  
  
"Fine," Max stood and walked out of the room.  
  
"Let's hope all of this can wait until this afternoon," Kiros shooed the other two out of his office, "And let's pray that the Sorceress and her father haven't decided to show up for any dire reasons."~  
  
  
  
Well, I think things are starting up... Let's see what Rin's up to. 


	4. Good News? Is it really?

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I don't know what Caraway's character is like, so he's going to wind up really snooty... I have no idea why.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 4  
  
~0600 hours that morning~  
  
The dark haired man stalked into the Garden, glaring at it as if it had personally offended him. His daughter followed quietly behind him.  
  
The thirteen SeeD instructors, and the Headmaster stood in a straight line in the central hallway of the building. Standing in two rows in front of them were the seventy-two students they were trying to teach.  
  
The youngest of the children stood, fidgeting. The older man spotted her and glared. The little girl's face pinched up, and she started sniffling. The old man's glare got harsher. Now the tiny blonde covered her eyes with her hands, whirled, and dashed right up to Seifer, who scooped her straight up, much to the General's surprise.  
  
With eyebrow's raised, the man growled, "How do you intend to teach discipline if you can't even keep them from fidgeting and bawling?"  
  
"Father," Rinoa started, but her father hushed her.  
  
"Well, sir," the extremely tall, white-haired man clipped back, "It's not every day we have people as important as you and your daughter."  
  
"Nor is it every day that Thea is glared at by evil-looking old men," one of the auburn-haired men raised an eyebrow.  
  
"You don't even have discipline amongst yourselves," Caraway spoke condescendingly.  
  
"Pardon us, General," Kiros managed to sound respectful, "But we are just a group of mercenaries. These are children. Thea is all of five years old, and I highly doubt you were as disciplined as you are now when you were five. No one could have been."  
  
"Except maybe Squall," Rinoa attempted a joke.  
  
"Allow me to escort you to your rooms," the auburn-haired young man who'd flared up a bit ago seemed to have reined in his temper, "If you would follow me."  
  
As soon as the three left, Seifer set Thea back on the ground, whereupon she promptly giggled, "Did I do that right?"  
  
"Perfectly so, my dear," Kiros grinned widely at the little girl, "And because of that," he paused and verified his decision with the others by eye contact, "Today will be a recreational day. Those of you who wish to read, Quistis will watch over you in the library. Any games will be monitored by Zell, Selphie, Lynne and Seifer. For those of you who wish to train, Squall, Edgar, Eric, and Maria will keep watch for you. And for those, oh so few, who wish to go back to sleep, Ariadne, Xia, and Irvine will walk you to your dorms. I will have no problems, as long as you report to one of the other areas as soon as you wake back up."  
  
The children happily split up into their groups and traveled to the respective areas as soon as Kiros stopped speaking.  
  
"Do you honestly think that did anything?" Max had returned about halfway through the impromptu speech. He looked back toward the guest rooms, "The little prank on the old guy might work for now, but who knows how long it will continue to."  
  
"I have never liked Caraway," Kiros shook his head, "Therefore, I do what I can to anger him without getting into trouble for it. He returns the favor."  
  
"And right now you're one up on him because he doesn't realize that you set him up," Max snorted, "And I thought kids' games were childish."  
  
"At least you won't catch us throwing tantrums," the black man grinned down at the younger man.  
  
"That would set a great example, wouldn't it," Max snorted, "Though it might get you back in Esthar. As nuts as he is, even Laguna would think twice about leaving you here if you're throwing fits."  
  
"It's an idea, isn't it?" Kiros stepped into the elevator, "But I won't, since that would leave poor Leonhart as the Headmaster until a replacement arrived. And he's been quite adamant about leaving before allowing that."  
  
"Do you blame him?" Max shook his head as the elevator doors closed. He then turned and walked toward the cafeteria, "It's amazing how we got more than enough cooks to supply food, but we can't get any more instructors."  
  
~  
  
Rinoa slipped out of her room and wandered about the Garden. It looked similar to the one near Balamb, with the sections of the building radiating from the center, but it was a little more orderly, like the one near her home. The coloration was certainly unique. Rinoa laughed slightly, thinking that Selphie had gotten her hands on the decoration scheme. There was yellow all over the place. Railings were painted with it, walkways had arrows of it, and there was a trio of girls holding paintbrushes, covering the walls with it...  
  
"Are you three supposed to be painting the walls yellow?" she stopped and asked.  
  
"Uh-huh," the tallest of the three, with mocha-colored eyes blinked upward. She then spoke through the gap in her front teeth, "Mishta Shkwall ashed ush to."  
  
"What are your names," Rinoa squatted slightly toward them, smiling gently.  
  
"I'm Reline," the mocha-eyed girl jabbed a semi-painted finger at herself, "She'sh Ashura, and that'sh Mayra."  
  
"Nu-uh," the little red-head groused, "My name's Asura, not Ashura."  
  
"Honey," Rinoa smiled at all three little girls, "You'll have to bear with her until her teeth grow in."  
  
"Oh," Asura blinked, "Sorry, Reline."  
  
"Sh'okay," the other girl grinned.  
  
"Bye-bye, girls!" Rinoa giggled, and walked away. She decided to find some adults and inform them of the little yellow-fiends.  
  
When she reached the center of the Garden, she looked at the directory. She'd just come from the Guest area..  
  
"Need help?" the voice caused Rinoa to whirl around, so she was facing a man with red hair, who stood just a little bit shorter than she was.  
  
"As a matter of fact, I do," she smiled brightly, "I need to find one of the Instructors."  
  
"Found one," the redhead grinned, "My name's Lynne Moire. What did you need, Miss Heartilly?"  
  
"Well," she looked in the direction she'd come from, "There are three girls in the Guest hallway, painting fixtures yellow."  
  
"Ah," he laughed, "That would be Asura, Mayra, and Reline."  
  
"Do they do this often?" Rinoa blinked.  
  
"They always paint the Guest hallway yellow," he grinned now, "And then three little boys, Ashran, Grendyl, and Zack go through about an hour later, and paint it all back to blue. Then the girls go through again."  
  
"Isn't that a waste of paint?" Rinoa giggled.  
  
"Not out of our funds," Lynne shrugged, "All six of 'em come from wealthy families, and their mummies and daddies pay for the paint, even after we've told them what it's getting used for. They don't care, we won't either, as long as they keep it to the Guest area."  
  
"How does this do them any good?" Rinoa blinked again.  
  
"We're not sure," Lynne shrugged, "Those six aren't making much effort to learn, so we're hoping that they'll either get tired of it all and whine to go home, find out that they're just wasting time, or get to the point that they're dealt with by Squall, Seifer, or Kiros."  
  
"How would that have an effect?" Rinoa asked.  
  
"Well," Lynne scratched his nose lightly, and found skin peeling from the sunburn on it, "The first two will deal with the problem in the easiest way. But we've had to send back home four children in the last year because they behaved badly. They each saw one of them."  
  
"What about the fourth?"  
  
"Well," Lynne hesitated, "That one spoke with Max, and we learned to use him as a last resort."  
  
"I take it, that it didn't go well," Rinoa crossed her arms.  
  
"Well, it's like this," Lynne shuddered, "Squall froze the little tyke, telling her that her behavior was not suitable for a SeeD candidate, much less a SeeD, so she was to go home and grow up before she could even try to become a SeeD candidate again, and even then she'd be under serious probation. Seifer took the other tack, scaring the kid into saying that he wanted to go home. And Kiros just told him that he would be better suited to being a normal soldier, because he was such a bully. Max, well, he took all three tacks on the last one."  
  
"What happened there?" Rinoa bit at a nail.  
  
"The little guy left, bawling," Lynne snorted, "But then came back the next year, and he's been almost a little angel since."  
  
"Then why is he a last resort?"  
  
"Because we want to lower the student to instructor ratio," Selphie giggled, "And having them come back only makes things worse!"  
  
"Well," Rinoa smiled brightly, "Then I have good news for you all!"  
  
"What?" Selphie leaned forward, anxious for the good news.  
  
"The Headmasters of the other three Gardens, and Laguna all agreed to let me teach here even though I'm not a formal SeeD!"  
  
~  
  
  
  
Is that news as good as she thinks it is? ~Thus speaks one who believes that no circumstances would have gotten the SeeDs to change their policies regarding late entrée/graduation~ 


	5. Slip of a wholly different kind...

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I don't know what Caraway's character is like, so he's going to wind up really snooty... I have no idea why.  
  
I'm not sure whether you wanna call it Rinoa bashing or what, but I'm sure I'm not exactly nice to her...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 5  
  
"Um," Selphie paused, "Wow, uh, what do you, er, what are you,"  
  
"Which subjects do you think you want to teach?" Lynne seemed almost hopeful.  
  
"Well," Rinoa counted out on her fingers, "I was intending to teach manners and the use of magic, but if you need me to teach anything else, I could do that too!"  
  
Selphie giggled a bit, but paused to say, "Rin, there isn't a child over nine here, and that's too young for etiquette or magic. We still have to teach them the basics of survival! So you'd be best off waiting unless you can get the kids to settle down and learn first aid better than Zell, Edgar and Lynne here!"  
  
"Oh," Rinoa thought for a moment, "Why do they need first aid? How is it more important than learning magic?"  
  
Lynne just froze, eying her like she was some strange, unclassified specimen of creature that had just spat up on him.  
  
"Teaching them magic won't be of any use unless they know what to do for their friends after the magic has been cast," the young man that had snapped at her father earlier walked from another area, holding a plate of food, "As anxious as we are to lower the ratio, we aren't going to do it that way, that'll kill our reputation faster than it will the kids."  
  
"Oh," Rinoa paled, "I hadn't thought of that. Sorry! I guess I can wait to teach those subjects. Are there any others where you're short handed. Because Squall and the others I know can attest to how bad I am at first-aid."  
  
"Then we're gonna have to teach you too," Lynne groaned, "At least you aren't going to flinch at the possibility of having to use it maybe on a," he mimed out the warding off of evil, "BOY!"  
  
Selphie nearly fell to the floor giggling, "You've gotta be the only one who can do it that well."  
  
"Just don't show any of the kids that," the other man smirked, "Or that'll turn into their catch act."  
  
"Ugh," Lynne glared at the ceiling, "That really takes the fun out of it."  
  
"I never caught your name," Rinoa turned to the man who, by a sheer lack of luck, had some food in his mouth, "But I remember seeing you when we encased my Sorceress powers in that crystal, and then you threw it into the water."  
  
The man nodded, chewing his food.  
  
"Rinoa, this is Max," Selphie performed the introduction, as Max was still slightly unable to talk, "And Max, meet Rinoa."  
  
He nodded, and Rinoa held her hand out as though he were to shake it. He stared at her hand, glanced at the plate in his hands, and then looked back at her hand.  
  
"I don't think you want him to shake your hand," Lynne laughed, "Max is a messy eater, there's no telling how much he's gotten on his hands and unless you really wanna eat without having to go to the caf,"  
  
"Aw, be quiet!" Max yelped after finishing his mouthful of food, "I'm not that bad, it's just that this is an awkward plate, and I really don't want to cover you three do I?"  
  
"Speaking of which," Rinoa glanced significantly at the amount of food on the plate, "Why are you eating so much?"  
  
"Haven't had a proper meal in about twenty four hours," Max turned and walked toward the elevator.  
  
"Where are you going?" Rinoa asked.  
  
"Headmaster's office," Max didn't even turn to face her.  
  
"Why in the world?" Rinoa looked at the other two, "What possible reason could he have for bringing food to the Headmaster's office," then her face, being about like an open book, showed what conclusion she'd come to, "Oh... He's like that."  
  
This time both Lynne and Selphie cracked up. They laughed so loud that Quistis, who was nearby, heard. She had left the library, since there was only one child in there, and the little one was blessedly asleep, "What is going on, you three?"  
  
"She thinks Max," Lynne fought to say between laughter and gasping for breath.  
  
"Oh," Quistis added up the expression on the dark haired woman's face and the laughter issuing from the other two, "You think he's with the Headmaster for non conventional reasons."  
  
"Ugh," Rinoa shuddered.  
  
"Sorry to disillusion you," Quistis smiled, "He, Kiros and Squall are,"  
  
"Squall TOO!?" Rinoa yelped, interrupting.  
  
"What about me?" Squall raised an eyebrow as he walked out of the training area with three children in tow.  
  
"Not with children around, that's for certain!" Rinoa scolded, "They shouldn't have to hear it!"  
  
"What, that you have a dirty mind?" Selphie finally overcame the giggles enough to spout, "It's really not like that, its just paperwork!"  
  
"Don't try to lie to me!" Rinoa glared at the cheery young brunette.  
  
"Sheesh," Selphie blinked, "We're not! You jumped to conclusions, and we're just trying to get you off those islands!"  
  
The little children started laughing. Lynne held a straight face for a few seconds, and caught his breath, "Okay guys, let's go to the games," and he led the children to the room designated for playing.  
  
"Selphie, why weren't you and Lynne in there?" Squall nodded his head in the direction Lynne had left in.  
  
"Because he was going to meet you here," Selphie looked up, smiling brightly, "And I was wondering what was taking so long."  
  
"They had to clean up a bit," Squall snorted, "After all, running around the training center doesn't leave everyone smelling fresh as a daisy, as it were."  
  
"Okies," Selphie waved as she left.  
  
"So now what's going on?" Squall turned to Rinoa and Quistis.  
  
"It would be bad enough to find out you're with a guy, but two of them?" Rinoa put her hands on her hips, "And you're teaching young, impressionable children?!"  
  
"Actually," Squall glared, "Max, Kiros, and I got a large pile of paperwork from Laguna, Cid, and the Shumi that we're trying to puzzle out. If you want proof,"  
  
"Oh," Rinoa froze, "Oh dear. I really messed up that time didn't I?"  
  
"No kidding," Quistis looked at her sternly, "That was certainly an interesting look into your beliefs."  
  
"Well," Rinoa fidgeted, "Isn't allowing them to teach children kind of messing up the chance they'll come out normal?"  
  
"I'm not getting into this conversation," Squall snorted, "I have work to do."  
  
"Thank you ever so much for leaving me with this," Quistis mock glared at him.  
  
"What are you talking about?" Rinoa looked back and forth between them.  
  
"Let's say your assumption had been true," Quistis started walking, and indicated that Rinoa should follow, "Would you have been able to guess that of any of those three otherwise?"  
  
"No," Rinoa stared at her feet as she walked.  
  
"What's the guarantee that the children would have known?" Quistis approached the library door, punched in a code, and then walked through, "So if they can't tell, it can't affect their decisions down the line, right?"  
  
"I guess," Rinoa looked around at the library.  
  
"And besides," Quistis sniffed lightly, "If you're going to say that having teachers who prefer their own gender will affect their chances of coming out 'normal,' as you put it, then why is there a problem? After all shouldn't we give children equal opportunities to decide for themselves how their lives will shape out? In which case there should be more teachers,"  
  
"I understand what you're trying to say," Rinoa scrunched up her nose, "But I don't like it."  
  
"Then you don't have to remain here," Quistis turned to check on the little girl in the library, sleeping, "Because mercenaries are noted for being open about anything. If they aren't open about this, then the list of other things could be endless. That's another lesson that we try to teach these children. Be open-minded. As far as I know, we don't have any couples here at all, much less any that are single-gendered."  
  
"You're kidding!" Rinoa gasped, "Not even Selphie and Irvine?"  
  
"It's just in their nature to be affectionate friends," Quistis smiled, "So it looks like they're dating, when they're just really, um, touchy, friends. They don't exclude anyone from their affection, though they are hesitant like nothing else with Max. May have something to do with the fact that when Selphie used him as a pillow, he squeaked."  
  
"He squeaked," Rinoa tried not to giggle.  
  
Quistis nodded, "We think he didn't notice at first, since she'd been leaning against him through the little movie, but then he looked down at some point, and realized she'd fallen asleep, and he squeaked. He was as shocked as anyone else, and now, he avoids them for the most part, and they avoid him."  
  
"Almost sounds like he has a crush on her," Rinoa giggled, her previous assumption thrown out the window as she came up with a new one.  
  
"Actually," Quistis smiled, "We think it had something to do with the fact that she was ill at the time, and he honestly was frightened that she'd expired on his arm."  
  
Rinoa laughed outright, "That's hilarious! And now they avoid each other?"  
  
"Well, they certainly don't use him as a pillow anymore, and that's all he'd allow in the first place," Quistis shrugged, "But really, you'll have to be careful if you are going to be an instructor here, not to mention the fact that it still has to be cleared by Kiros."  
  
"Why not Squall?" Rinoa looked at Quistis questioningly, "Isn't he in charge here?"  
  
"No," Quistis shook her head, "He and Max are only in the Headmaster's office because the three of them have to figure out those files. Kiros is the headmaster."  
  
"Oh," Rinoa blinked, then looked around the library, "This is huge!"  
  
"Not really," Quistis shook her head, "The bookcases are only about half as tall as the ones in Balamb Garden, and there are only half as many. On top of that, they aren't even half full."  
  
"That's still a lot of books!" Rinoa glanced around, "Could I look around?"  
  
"I have no problem with the idea," Quistis shrugged, "You'll just have to stay in here with it."  
  
~  
  
  
  
That's clearing up a few things. ~Causing a few messes, and intimating that Rin doesn't see many books. Hm... Guess it's a subconscious thing.~ 


	6. Skipped Vacations?

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I don't know what Caraway's character is like, so he's going to wind up really snooty... I have no idea why.  
  
I'm not sure whether you wanna call it Rinoa bashing or what, but I'm sure I'm not exactly nice to her...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 6  
  
"I wonder what Caraway wants," Kiros thought aloud as he reached for food from the plate that Max had brought up, "Even if his daughter is supposed to be an instructor."  
  
"I get the feeling that it has something to do with the other Gardens," Max muttered.  
  
The elevator whirred signaling that it was in use. Since this Garden was, at present, smaller than any of the others, there were only two floors. And since the only two occupants weren't riding the elevator to the first floor there had to be someone on their way up to see the Headmaster.  
  
"It's probably Caraway demanding that we aid him in some mad scheme or another," Kiros bit through a carrot with extra viciousness.  
  
"He's probably driving Squall mad on the trip up," Max snickered quietly.  
  
"What gives you that idea?" Kiros blinked and stopped mid-chew.  
  
"The little screen right there that shows the occupants of the elevator," Max grinned, pointing.  
  
"I can't believe I never saw that," Kiros chuckled, "No wonder no one can sneak up on you. You find all of the surveillance devices that no one else even knows about."  
  
Max snorted as the elevator doors open, "Isn't it my job to keep track of security?"  
  
"You have an immature punk in charge of security?" Caraway snapped immediately after exiting the elevator, "No wonder there are children painting the walls blue."  
  
"So Ashran, Grendyl, and Zack took over after Asura, Mayra, and Reline," Max grinned, "We let them paint the guest rooms because there's no one important there."  
  
The old man turned a dull red in fury, "Not important?! I am here to give you people a job to do!"  
  
"In case you hadn't noticed," Kiros raised an eyebrow, "We barely have enough instructors to teach now, which means we have no one to spare."  
  
"You've been in session for almost a full year, now, right?" Caraway stood tall, as though that would make his point faster.  
  
"So?" Kiros shook his head.  
  
"Well," Caraway snorted, "Even the other Gardens let their students go for a time during the year."  
  
Kiros blinked and counted mentally. Max and Squall just looked shocked.  
  
"We forgot to give them a vacation?" Kiros spluttered lightly, "That's just great."  
  
"It means," Caraway gloated, "That the children will be going back to their homes, and all of you will be available for the job."  
  
"Not really," Squall snorted, "Not everyone has family, or one who wants to keep them."  
  
"We would still at least have to keep three or four people stay behind, to watch the Garden," Kiros argued.  
  
"I only need about five of them anyway," Caraway waved a hand dismissively, "I think it would be best to use the five that traveled with my daughter."  
  
"Actually," Kiros smirked, "I was going to send our strongest members."  
  
"Which are the same people, I assume," the general rolled his eyes.  
  
"Not a good idea, actually," Kiros grinned outright, "Excuse me for one moment, I have to call a few people up here."  
  
~  
  
That's clearing up a few things.  
~Wonder if I should say more about the security system, considering...~ 


	7. Interruption of Time, the first

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I'm in an evil mood... this chapter jumps forward quite a bit... to around the time that Ultimecia actually takes power...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 7  
  
"It has been calculated and theorized that this time period," the instructor droned, "our time period is the one where the Last Sorceress, Ultimecia will originate from."  
  
"Why does it matter?" one perky little student asked.  
  
"Because, even though she was defeated," the instructor's monotone didn't waver, "We still have to train SeeD's for fighting her, to keep her power at a constant level. It was also theorized that she would gain power if anything was changed from their time to ours."  
  
Most of the class sat in their seats placidly, taking notes as they felt the need. But one student, whose ancestors actually had taken part in the events the instructor related, already knew it all. Her several times great-grandmother had been among those who cast all of Sorceress' powers into a stone, and her many times great-grandfather had been among those who actually defeated the Sorceress Ultimecia. She'd heard the story often enough that she knew it by heart by the time she was seven. She was now seventeen.  
  
She stared out the window, not even trying to note any of the details for the quiz that would be next class period. She knew the material, and probably knew it even better than the instructor, even though it was a machine programmed by the SeeD's of so long ago.  
  
When the end of the class arrived, the girl stood, unfolding her rather tall frame from the chair she'd been sitting in. She could swear sometimes that they hadn't renovated those blasted things since the time of those 'legendary' SeeDs. In fact, when she didn't have to worry about being scolded for using such language, she did. When she walked out of the room, some of the less polite students shoved her just as she reached the hallway.  
  
"Ow!" she yelped, her pitch black hair swinging into her face. She turned angry violet eyes toward her tormentors.  
  
"Don't think yer so great jes cause you got family thet was part of all this!" the boss, as it were, of the group growled, "We all heard you braggin' bout this next test!"  
  
"Big deal," she snorted, and shoved the shorter boy out of her way, "You're just pissed off because I know this shit like I do, and you actually are going to have to read for once if you want a scoring average anything like your hero's!" she mimed a swoon, trying to egg him out of control. They were easier like that.  
  
"What are you all up to?" the tall reddish haired man leaned against the wall slightly, and crossed his arms.  
  
"Nothin, sir," the whole lot of them stuttered, "We wuz just,"  
  
"If you're going to lie," he snorted lightly, and pushed away from the wall, "At least do me the favor of speaking properly."  
  
The boys nodded madly and left.  
  
"I was taking care of them myself, Max," she rolled her eyes at the old family friend, then thanked him, "But thanks anyway."  
  
"Aura," he shook his head, "You're only digging a hole for yourself that you won't be able to get back out of."  
  
"Why should that matter?" she drawled, "You're always there to rescue me!"  
  
He sighed dramatically, "But what about the day when I won't be there?"  
  
"That day will never come," she giggled, "Not even if you find some nice g-"  
  
"Aura!" he yelped, even though he laughed at her antics as well.  
  
"To settle down with," she laughed as he turned a vivid red, "Sorry, I couldn't resist."  
  
"You have weapon's practice," he nodded toward the rifle she had strung casually across her back, "It doesn't matter if you've already all but mastered it, you still have to have,"  
  
"I know," she muttered, "But since I also have to have an observer from SeeD, would you mind,"  
  
"Why do you think I'm here?" he smiled, "I knew you wouldn't want to practice with any of the other SeeDs around. You don't like them much."  
  
"Well, considering that all of the other children who descended from that oh-so-perfect group are attending Galbadia, Balamb, or Trabia Garden..." she shrugged, "They think I'm supposed to be a spoiled b,"  
  
"Why must you insist on using words with such a lack of originality?" he swiped a hand down the front of his face, "Although, I have to admit, Ernst was just like you."  
  
"I still find it hard to believe that you're older than you look," Aura giggled, "There are so many people who think you're seventeen or something, but,"  
  
"Fine, fine," Max gently pushed her toward the training center, "Shouldn't we get you to the Center to train?"  
  
~  
  
Don't take things at face value...  
~Time is a strange thing to deal with, what was once known can be unknown.~ 


	8. Have they returned, or ar they completel...

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I don't know what Caraway's character is like, so he's going to wind up really snooty... I have no idea why.  
  
I'm not sure whether you wanna call it Rinoa bashing or what, but I'm sure I'm not exactly nice to her...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 8  
  
"How did we get into this mess?" Lynne muttered as they arrived in Deling, "I honestly don't see how we rate as strong."  
  
"Perhaps," Edgar paused, "perhaps he went with physical strength."  
  
"That makes sense," Eric snorted, "In a twisted, vengeful sort of manner."  
  
"Well," Zell rolled his eyes, "At least they asked what exactly we were meant to do."  
  
"Even if sending us was meant almost expressly to anger Caraway," Eric rubbed his forehead, "at least it won't be very difficult."  
  
"We hope," Ariadne shook her head.  
  
"I still don't see why he sent you instead of the ones who worked with my daughter," Caraway continued to fume.  
  
"Because he wanted his strongest SeeDs," Eric rolled his eyes behind the older man's back.  
  
"Of the lot of you," Caraway glared at them, then focused on Zell, "only he fought in that altercation."  
  
"So?" Lynne glared back, leaning slightly on his staff to remind the general of their status as warriors.  
  
"The rest of you have not proven yourselves," Caraway snorted.  
  
"So we have to save the world to be real SeeDs?" Eric snorted, "Even though both Lynne and I have been instructors for three years prior to our assignment to Centra Garden?"  
  
"Haven't fought any world-threatening evils, have you?" Caraway growled.  
  
"No, but we helped lock away the magic that would have forced us to fight hundreds of others in the course of time," Edgar grinned, "Besides, being a hero isn't all it's hacked out to be, to quote Squall himself."  
  
"Well here's your chance to become heroes," Caraway glared at the taller, blonde man, for his bad timing of humor.  
  
"In your book," Lynne growled low enough that Caraway didn't catch it, "Rogue Elementals that you think are supposed to be Guardian forces when there are no more forces."  
~  
  
"I still don't quite understand that," Lynne muttered, as they wandered through the ruins known as the 'Tomb of the Unknown King,' "Why again did we put magic out of common use by eliminating the Guardians?"  
  
"It wasn't a conscious decision," Eric drawled lightly, "Or even a real choice. They freed Max from the remnants of the spell Ultimecia had put him under, and then took it as a given that they'd earned their freedom."  
  
"Which kind of leaves those of us without Max's gift for using magic without them, up a river without a paddle," Zell rolled his eyes.  
  
"Done that before?" Edgar joked, "The last time I did it, I had loads of fun going over a waterfall."  
  
"You really have a weird sense of humor," Lynne shrugged, and then turned left, "This place was geared toward single directional turns, right?"  
  
"We are supposed to follow the hallways until we encounter the rogue Elemental," Eric nodded.  
  
"Um, fill me in again on the Elemental's description," Zell peered around one of the corners.  
  
"It was ice blue in color," Ariadne read off from the report, "Standing about seven feet tall, and had silver eyes, no pupils. It appeared to have long red hair, and six arms. It wore a crimson cloak, and bore a sword in four arms. The other two were always crossed in front of it. It only,"  
  
"That's fine Ari," Zell turned back to the others, "I think it found us."  
  
"Why not 'we found it?'" Edgar blinked at the other blonde man.  
  
Zell backed up as a creature almost matching the description given walked around the corner he'd been peering at.  
  
"Oh," Edgar blinked, and looked up, "That's why."  
  
~  
  
That's clearing up a few things.  
  
Okay, I'm not sure what to do with the Interludes, (Interruptions of the Past) so I'll ask you all. Should I turn those into a story line of their own, or continue to have them as Interruptions? Yes, there will be more. ~Increasingly important they are, I find.~ 


	9. The Garden's getting finished, finally!

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the six newbies are mine.   
  
I don't know what Caraway's character is like, so he's going to wind up really snooty... I have no idea why.  
  
I'm not sure whether you wanna call it Rinoa bashing or what, but I'm sure I'm not exactly nice to her...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 9  
  
After releasing the students for the vacation, Kiros called a meeting for the instructors who had not gone on Caraway's mission. He'd informed the five of them before they left of what he waited to tell the others. When the meeting convened, everyone stood or sat in the largest room in the Garden, even if the cafeteria didn't seem like it was worth much for privacy.   
  
"Two months?" Selphie yelped, "We only got rid of them for two months?"  
  
"Calm down," Kiros sighed, "We are going to restart the session at about the time the other Gardens will. Which is two months. I have already received messages from about twelve of the families stating that their children will not be returning."  
  
"That takes us to sixty," Quistis noted, "But we're also getting about twenty more at the start of this next term. Which puts us back up to eighty."  
  
"We are also going to get four more instructors," Kiros added, "And I've decided to set up a learning system a little different from the other Gardens'. Galbadia is much like a military school, and the students all fail if anyone can't keep up in class. Trabia is very forgiving in its grading, allowing anyone with grades as low as fifty percent correct to pass, and Balamb teaches somewhere in between, with students being required to maintain eighty percent or higher, and no one in a class can advance until all have reached that point."  
  
"So how are we differing?" Irvine pushed his hat higher on his head.  
  
"The students who reach eighty percent mastery will be allowed to advance, even if there are others in their year groups and classes who haven't," Kiros responded.  
  
"In other words," Maria rolled her eyes, "We're going to have to keep up with the fast learning students while not neglecting the slower ones."  
  
"Oh," Selphie blinked, "So we're going to be a 'move at your own pace' type of school. COOL!"  
  
"But what's this about having to relocate for the break?" Xia read from the itinerary.  
  
"The Shumi finished rebuilding Trabia Garden," Kiros noted, "So they'll be headed here to finish what has already been started, and to upgrade it."  
  
"They're hoping that in two months the building will be complete," Squall shrugged, "At a capacity of about thirteen hundred."  
  
"That's huge!" Selphie squeaked.  
  
"Not really," Max shook his head, "both Galbadia and Balamb Gardens are larger by six hundred students, and neither of them have reached capacity."  
  
"It just seems big to us because Trabia Garden's capacity is eight hundred, and the population hasn't reached even half that," Xia smiled, "Of course, what person in their right mind would want to live in a snow smothered Garden? Aside from Squall or Max."  
  
"Who says they're in their right minds?" Seifer snorted, "After all, they've already put in transfer requests to Trabia."  
  
"What?" Selphie squealed, "You're serious? ALL RIGHT!" she danced around the cafeteria for a minute or two.  
  
"I assume that means she's happy with this," Max looked back and forth among the other instructors.  
  
"That's a safe assumption," Rinoa giggled at the shorter girl's antics.  
  
"Now I REALLY have a reason to go back home!" Selphie giggled and wrapped her arms around Max, squeezing him as hard as she could, "I might be able to get the two of you to loosen up, you act like you've got sticks up your,"  
  
"Selphie," Quistis covered the hyper brunette's mouth, "Those are dangerous things to say around here, with children possibly in range."  
  
After blinking twice to make sure that he was still in some form of reality, Max relaxed slightly from the 'deer in headlights' stance he'd taken the instant Selphie's arms had trapped him, "Chances are, whatever you're trying to shield them from, they've already heard. Remember she is in charge of them for a good portion of any given day... Anything she's capable of saying in front of us, she likely has gotten 'kid tested,' and 'kid approved.' No matter how dangerous it is."  
  
"Wait," Maria paused, looking at him steadily with her dark brown eyes, "You actually don't know what would have finished that phrase?"  
  
"Not a clue," Max shrugged, "I don't keep up with a lot of the colloquialisms. Then again, I do have a year's worth of back-log in everything that I still haven't caught up on."  
  
"So," Kiros rolled his eyes, "Getting back to the subject we were originally dealing with," he sent a light glare Selphie's way, "While we wait for this Garden to be completed, we will stay at one of the other three. Supposedly, we are recruiting students, but I feel we would be better off trying to recruit other instructors. The five on a mission will also carry this out, if they get their task completed before the two months are through."  
  
"Which of us go to what Garden?" Rinoa glanced around the room, "because I kind of like the idea of visiting Trabia again."  
  
"Fine," Kiros smiled, "You'll go to Trabia with Zell, Eric, Ariadne, and Seifer. Quistis, Maria, Xia, and Selphie will travel to Galbadia Garden, and Max, Squall, Lynne, Irvine, and Edgar will go to Balamb. I have to return to Esthar."  
  
~  
  
It is starting to move around in a weird way, so I can't even hope to tell you what the intent is... ~It's kind of sad how short this one is shaping up, word wise, not that it really matters much~ 


	10. Interruption of Time, the second

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.   
  
I have a feeling that more questions will be answered in these fast forward chapters... Of course they'll raise a few of their own, I hope.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 10  
  
"Honestly, Aura," one of the human instructors scolded, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually trying to beat Seifer Almasy's record of attempts at becoming a SeeD."  
  
The tall woman spoken of gritted her teeth. She knew all of her siblings and cousins had been able to graduate at the first or second attempts. She currently had made six attempts, and had failed all of them. She figured that the first had been understandable, as she'd been the reason for the mission failure. The second failure was explainable as a simple act of rebellion. The youth who had been her squad captain had been a first class jerk. She'd refused to follow his orders. In the third, she'd followed orders, but the captain had been a lazy fool. But she couldn't fathom the last three failures.  
  
Fighting back tears, as the next test would be her last, Aura left the instructor to her self-righteous blathering. She would turn nineteen three days after the test, and would be therefore ineligible to ever retry afterward.  
  
Blindly heading to her dorm room, Aura was surprised to run into another person, literally.  
  
"Aura," the soft voice of her oldest friend opened the floodgates, and she sobbed brokenly on Max's shoulder.  
  
"Why?" her voice wobbled around the word through her tears.  
  
"I don't know," he wrapped his arms gently around her," I'm not on the committee. They make the decisions, not I, or you'd have passed on the fourth try."  
  
"Then it wasn't something I did wrong?" she peered up at the kind-hearted redhead, hoping for confirmation.  
  
"Not as far as I can tell," he patted her back once more, then released her to stand on her own, "But I'd have a little trouble finding out."  
  
"I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about," Aura grinned, cheering a little, and recovering enough to feign ignorance of his intent to find out why she had failed with little visible reason.  
  
"Exactly as it should be," he grinned back, "But I think you need to rest. You're too stressed out."  
  
~  
  
The Max of this time is both the same and not the same as the Max of the other...  
  
  
And how cryptic can I get? I've just about confused myself here!  
~Though that's not terribly difficult.~ 


	11. The tomb of multipurposing...

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.   
  
Do I have enough viewpoints in this thing, or what?  
  
~  
  
Chapter 11  
  
"You wouldn't happen to be Gilgamesh, would you?" Edgar asked the figure.  
  
~I am.~ They still heard the Guardian through their minds, even though it was existing on the same plane.  
  
"Why are you here?" Lynne blinked, "I mean, everyone thinks you're all dead or something. Or at least that no one will ever see you again."  
  
~~We are not bound any more by the request of your 'Hyne' to assist you humans with magic. We deemed it better to leave immediately and let you discover the abilities for yourselves completely on your own, than to do so gradually.~~  
  
The second voice was one they had never heard before. Feminine this time, and slightly higher than Griever's or Tiamat's had been, but it had a kind of leathery feel across their minds.  
  
"Bahamut?" Zell blinked, "Whoa!"  
  
Two figures had stepped around the corner just behind Gilgamesh. Rather than two dragons, they were two women, almost identical in appearance. The one on the left had crimson eyes, and violet hair. Her clothing was obscured by a cloak around her shoulders that clasped at the juncture of her collarbones. The whole cloak seemed made of some kind of animal skin, and when it sporadically twitched, they realized that it was actually a pair of wings closed around her for protection. The other woman had deep blue eyes, and silver hair. Like the other woman, she had the wing-cape that hid most of her body.  
  
^We do not usually stand this close to one another, true.^ Tiamat's voice touched their minds.  
  
"So the whole thing about the crystal was what set you free?" Edgar asked.  
  
~Yes. When you caused the Sorceress to gift her powers to it, we were released.~  
  
~~We agreed to be bound to the minds of humans so that the ones with magical gifts would be both protected and protected against. The humans you call 'Sorceresses' were in as much danger as they had the potential to cause.~~  
  
^Many children of your world now have the raw ability to use magic. They just need to be taught how to control it, and how to access it. That is why Rinoa is necessary for your schools. It is also part of the reason for Max's presence.^  
  
"Wait," Eric held a hand up, "You mean Max doesn't have to be here?"  
  
~It is not our place to explain.~  
  
"Well," Zell scratched his head, deciding that the issue with Max was better left alone, "If you're free, why are you here? Is this place like a home to you?"  
  
~~Where do you think the boundaries of our dimensions cross over one another?~~ Bahamut seemed to be laughing at them. ~~Just because we no longer must answer to your calls, it does not mean that we are no longer listening. Now we may choose when and if we respond, but many of you who asked for our presence would be answered, in a manner.~~  
  
"You mean you would show up in our minds again if we asked?" Ariadne spoke up finally.  
  
~~Exactly.~~  
  
"Well," Eric leaned gingerly against the stone walls of the ruin, "Do any of you perhaps know why SeeD still is necessary, even after the sorceresses no longer exist?"  
  
Tiamat snorted. ^Aside from the obvious loss of employment, no, we do not. You humans would understand the need better than we. After all, SeeD was a human concept.^  
  
"Guess we'll have to talk that over with the Headmasters," Zell shrugged, "So what are we supposed to do now that we've encountered the 'rogue' Guardians?" he vocally emphasized the quotation marks around the comment, "Because we aren't about to try capturing you three... Not considering any one of you is more powerful than the five of us combined."  
  
~So few of you mortals have such humility. It is refreshing. All the same, we do need to travel with you.~  
  
"Wait," Lynne blinked, "You're traveling with us? Why? Can't you just pop up wherever you want to go?"  
  
~~You must have come from the Garden that does not teach much about Guardians.~~ Bahamut's voice was tinged with humor. ~~We can only travel in your world if there are Sorceresses causing trouble. Otherwise, we can't become corporeal enough to affect your dimension.~~  
  
"That explains why you were usually 'junctioned' to creatures," Zell snapped his fingers, "And why there aren't many details in the history texts about Guardians traveling around on their own."  
  
^And you're supposed to be one of the less intelligent of the mortals?!^  
  
~  
  
I'm sure that something is going to happen soon... This is too friendly to be real.  
  
I decided that since I went so long between updates, I'd do just as well to upload three at a time this once. I doubt it will ever happen again. 


	12. Red Herrings don't really taste good, do...

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.   
  
  
~  
  
Chapter 12  
  
Zell scratched his head, and wondered aloud, "Wonder who all the Guardians need to talk to. After all, we've been scattered out for the completion of Centra Garden."  
  
"Damn, that's right," Lynne groaned, "I gotta go to Balamb with the ice twins."  
  
Edgar snorted, "It's not like you're the only one going there."  
  
Lynne grinned, "Hey yeah, you'll be there too."  
  
"So will Irvine," Edgar rolled his eyes, "How is it that the only co-ed group is going to Trabia?"  
  
Eric blinked, "That's right. We are in the only group with both genders present. Why are you so distressed, Edgar? It's not like you're dating any of the girls. Is it?"  
  
The blonde man flushed, "No. That's why it's so bad."  
  
Lynne snickered, "Poor baby, can't get a girl?"  
  
"Shut up, Lynne," Ariadne glared at the redhead, "It's not like you're faring any better!"  
  
~Can we cease with the childish banter?~  
  
Zell grinned as the others all jumped at Gilgamesh's sudden interruption.  
  
"Since you Guardians are so willing to divulge information," Eric snorted dryly, "Could you fill us in on how exactly Odin survived Seifer's attack?"  
  
^Wasn't he cryptic enough the first time you asked?^  
  
"Perhaps so," Eric blinked, "But we may need the information later."  
  
"Nah," Zell shook his head, "What good would it do us to know how a Guardian survived an attack like that? We can't, and it won't help us any to know how to kill them either."  
  
"Fine, fine, fine," Eric sighed, "I'll give up."  
  
~~We know it is only for now.~~  
  
The white-haired man laughed, "How true. That's one of the main complaints from my instructors. They called it insatiable, unstoppable curiosity. It also landed me into more trouble than anyone would guess."  
  
"Not to mention the possible use of material for blackmail," Lynne grinned.  
  
~  
  
"The Garden hasn't changed much in the three years it's been since I was last here," Max sat in one of the most heavily cushioned chairs in the guest area sitting room. Irvine sat in a wooden chair, backwards, and Squall had flopped down into another of the large armchairs.  
  
"It seems a little smaller, actually," Squall muttered, "If only because they've got us sharing rooms."  
  
"That is kinda funny, ain't it?" Irvine twisted his head from side to side, cracking his neck, "I mean, all the students share room pairs, and the SeeDs get individual rooms, but guests get a choice of three rooms, and you two lost out."  
  
Max snorted, "The only reason Squall, Edgar, Lynne and I are set up in pairs is because they suspected that you would be able to come up with your own bed partners."  
  
"So they're trying to hook you four up?" Irvine grinned at the shocked expression that crossed Max's and Squall's faces. The idea evidently had never occurred to them prior to that point.  
  
After a pause, Squall raised an eyebrow, "So then why are they rooming us with other guys?"  
  
Irvine shrugged, "I dunno, maybe they think you'd appreciate it more."  
  
A knock on the door cut off the conversation, and Irvine stood to answer it.  
  
"Irvine, I presume that Max and Squall are in there as well?" Cid nodded.  
  
"Nah," Irvine joked, stepping back, "They're in their room, christening the bed."  
  
Cid nodded distractedly, "I can come back later, if I must," then he noticed the other two in the room, "That was fast?"  
  
Irvine doubled over. Max shot a glare at the pony-tailed man, and Squall just flinched.  
  
"Sir," Max's voice barely registered above a growl, "Never mind him. What did you need to talk to us about?"  
  
Coughing slightly, Cid began by asking, "You do remember Caraway's mission, right?"  
  
"Yes," Squall shrugged, "Kiros sent some of our Instructors to investigate."  
  
"Well," Cid sighed, "They shouldn't have."  
  
"Why not?" Irvine had recovered from his laughter, and was completely serious, "Is there something about the rogue Guardians that ain't right?"  
  
"That's what the mission was?" Max blinked, "Now I know why Caraway was so determined to keep me out of the mission briefing. He knows I'm capable of communicating with the Guardians. If nothing else, I would have known that was a red herring."  
  
~  
  
It is starting to move around in a weird way, so I can't even hope to tell you what the intent is... ~Cliches bad quotes, and a strange sense of humor, all in one place, who could ask for less?~ 


	13. Interruption of Time, the third

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.   
  
  
~  
  
Chapter 13  
  
"Dammit!" Aura stormed away from the hallway full of other cadets. She got as far as the central section of the Garden before the fury gave way to despair, "Now I'll Never be a SeeD!"  
  
As she reached her dorm room, her silent shadow turned away and headed for the Headmaster's office.  
  
Of course, he timed his arrival to occur just after all of the new SeeDs had left. Not to mention the Headmaster. Max had a feeling he'd find the reason for the Headmaster's failing Aura yet again. He just wasn't sure if he wanted to know it for this particular test.  
  
Since all of the decisions as to who passed and who had to try again was based on a report of the events, Max knew he could find the report somewhere in the office. He wasn't in the least surprised to see it still on the desk.  
  
After he read the stack of reports, Max left the office, and headed for the dorms to speak with Aura.  
  
~  
  
Hearing a knock on her door, Aura paused in her packing, "Who is it?"  
  
Even though it was muffled, Aura recognized Max's voice, and allowed him in.  
  
"Aura," he leaned against the doorjamb, "Things will work out. Just give it time."  
  
"I don't have any time," Aura flailed a hand around, "I leave in three days."  
  
"I checked out the other three attempts," Max shrugged, "There were no reasons for him to have failed you. Aside from arbitrary decisions."  
  
Aura snorted, "It sure explains why some of the more recent inductees are only in SeeD because they invested in kneepads."  
  
"I did not need to hear that," Max flinched, "I really did not want to hear that tidbit of private information."  
  
Aura giggled slightly, "Thank you for cheering me up," she fiddled with a small crystal around her neck.  
  
"What is that?" Max blinked as the crystal reflected even the low light of the room.  
  
"I found it during the mission," Aura turned is a little more, "It was stuck in the middle of a rock chunk, and when the chunk shattered from a gunshot, I found it."  
  
Max looked closely at the stone. It emanated a power from within. As far as he could tell, it wasn't dangerous, but something about it made him uneasy. When he glanced back at Aura's face, he realized why. Something about the way she looked at it made him think of spell bound soldiers he had fought before.  
  
"Aura," Max tried to regain her attention, "Are you sure that stone is safe?"  
  
"Why wouldn't it be?" she looked up at him, blinking, "It's just a rock."  
  
Max shifted, "I have to go check on that last mission."  
  
"Don't just take their word for it," Aura suddenly leveled a glare at Max, "They've always hated me."  
  
Max shrugged, "You ought to know by now that I will try to learn everything before making a decision."  
  
"They'll want you to read that report," Aura muttered, "And that will just turn anyone against me."  
  
"I read the reports. They say you killed your squad captain," Max blinked as the crystal flared, even though Aura didn't seem to notice.  
  
"So you're going to side with them?" she growled.  
  
"I'm not siding with anyone yet," Max shook his head, "I'm trying to get all of the details first. I want to know why you did it."  
  
"Why don't you ask them?" Aura snorted, "You're already leaning towards believing them over me."  
  
"I already told you I'm reserving judgment," Max rolled his eyes, "But I will have to ask around all the same. I came over here to try and talk to you, but since you seem to be in a confrontational mood, I think I'll leave."  
  
He turned to leave, and the crystal flared again. Aura quietly drew a pistol from her side holster, and aimed it at the back of his left shoulder. All the same, Max heard it, and turned, which forced the shot to strike his other shoulder instead.  
  
Upon impact, Max's eyes widened as he fell backwards, "Why?"  
  
~  
  
It is starting to move around in a weird way, so I can't even hope to tell you what the intent is...  
~I can't quite figure out if that argument went quite the way it was meant to...~ 


	14. Jealousy, Envy, all things green

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.   
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
Here goes the Caraway and Rinoa bashing again. It's not intentional.. Or at least it didn't start off that way...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 14  
  
"A red herring?" Cid blinked, "Isn't that melodramatic?"  
  
Max rolled his eyes, "A little, but considering the way things may work out..." he shrugged, "Never mind. Caraway sent them to deal with 'rogue' Guardians, but there is no such thing. All of the Guardians are perfectly content to leave humans alone. The only Guardians that might conceivably interfere with humans are Odin, Gilgamesh and Phoenix. And they'll only do that if asked. The rest were bound to servitude, and hated it. Granted, they got to liking specific masters, but it was just that, they were masters, not allies, not friends."  
  
Cid coughed, "Well, even that's slightly beside the point. There was an ambush intended for them."  
  
"How'd you know?" Irvine leaned across the back of the chair he'd plopped back into.  
  
"Because Rinoa informed me of the trap that had been set to catch all four Gardens," Cid sighed, "Trabia Garden is being held under her power, and Galbadia Garden was taken over by Caraway's soldiers."  
  
"Why?" Squall blinked, "She gave up the power, so she has no reason to do this."  
  
"Caraway has always wanted the powers of the Guardians," Cid rubbed the bridge of his nose, under his glasses, "And they knew this, so they avoided him. He's never Junctioned to a Guardian, and it has slowly angered him beyond all reason. He's still a brilliant tactician, as is evidenced by the take-overs of the other two functioning Gardens. And the fact that he left this one alone because of who is here."  
  
"He still fears Matron," Irvine drawled, "Not surprising."  
  
"No," Cid shook his head, "We got a rather disturbing and unexpected visit from Doctor Odine."  
  
"So the old blockhead came up with a way to keep it from exploding?" Max said under his breath.  
  
"What?" Cid and the other two blinked at him in shock.  
  
"Odine has been working on a variation of his Sorceress bangles for years," Max rubbed the back of his neck, "He's just as obsessed with the Guardians as Caraway. They must have decided to work together. And Odine must have finally perfected the damn things."  
  
"Are you sure?" Cid's whole body seemed to be trembling.  
  
Max nodded grimly, "Tiamat, Bahamut and Gilgamesh have been captured."  
  
~  
  
Just as they left the sanctuary of the tomb, the SeeD instructors were attacked by a sense of unease. It may have had something to do with the physical attack launched at them at the same time, but perhaps it had more to do with the abrupt departure of the three Guardians, as though they had been drawn.  
  
The ranks were a mixture of soldiers and monsters, though they couldn't figure out how that had happened. The instructors spread out, fighting the monsters full force, and only fighting to knock out the human opponents. This put them at a disadvantage, as both sets of enemies were out to kill them.  
  
Zell found himself surrounded by human soldiers with guns, and had to run around in circles to avoid the sprays of bullets. -If the others saw this, I'd never live it down. They'd think I was dancing! Or worse, that it was some new variation of the 'fly swatting!'-  
  
He finally got close enough to one of the soldiers that the others actually had to be careful of their aim. A bullet that Zell hadn't anticipated sliced across the skin of his cheek, and Zell jerked his head away. Which happened to save his life, as the next bullet flew past where his skull had been and settled with a wet thunk into the head of another soldier. Zell kicked a few times, causing two or three to fall into one another, and then rounded on the ones that had been behind him.  
  
Standing where the soldiers had been was Lynne. The redhead had at first tried to just dodge everything, rather than actually fight, as his staff would almost instantly cause him to lose all rationality, to fight blindly against anything that attacked him, without holding back any force. By this time, he'd given up, and Zell could see that his usually brown eyes were almost black at this time.  
  
"I'm still myself," Lynne muttered, "Almost. It's not so hard to fight mad if you go with it. I still can't keep from killin' though."  
  
Zell nodded, understanding, "It always is harder to spare than to destroy."  
  
The two parted, Lynne to aid Edgar, who was facing about the same odds that Zell had. Zell dashed to help Eric, who was trying to help Ariadne.  
  
The female of the group had been the main target of the monsters. This was good, in that she could fight without holding back, but also bad because she had to keep from holding back. Eric had quickly joined her, slashing and clawing at whatever monsters got too close to Ariadne for her to effectively hit with her whip.  
  
When Zell got there, the majority of the monsters had fallen, and Eric was visibly gasping for air. Ariadne was fighting the urge to collapse straight out, and Zell stepped in front of both of them, cracking skulls and ripping out vertebrae as the creatures ventured within the reach of his hands.  
  
"Thanks," Eric gasped, as he stepped closer to Ariadne, who just fell to the ground, "We needed some help."  
  
"Is Edgar okay?" Ariadne asked, looking around blindly. One of the monsters had gotten close enough to swipe at her head. She'd been lucky enough to pull back so that her head wasn't ripped off, but the claws had scraped across her eyes, "What about Lynne?"  
  
Eric ripped part of his shirt, and pressed it gently in a folded square to her eyes, "Zell's dealing with the rest, Lynne hasn't gone totally berserk, and Edgar seems to be holding up fine."  
  
She nodded, "Figures I'd get the worst of it. Who knew that even the monsters were sexist?"  
  
"Nah," Eric grinned, though she couldn't see, "They're probably just mad that you're a pretty human, and not one of their species."  
  
Zell shook his head, used to them.  
  
Edgar walked slowly to their little resting place, supporting Lynne half over his shoulder, "Got any healing items left? Lynne managed to deal with the last of them, but he got sideswiped as one fell."  
  
"Ow," Lynne groaned as Edgar dropped him. He looked around and gave a short bark of humorless laughter, "Somehow, we're right back at the mouth of the tomb. Why do I not feel comforted by this?"  
  
Eric stood to hand a potion to Edgar, "I really wish you hadn't said anything about that."  
  
"Why not?" the leader of the troops finally stepped into their field of vision.  
  
"Caraway?!" Zell squawked, "What the hell?"  
  
"Such a pity the rogue Guardians killed you five," Caraway sighed dramatically, "but you interfered with their great escape. They had to do something to keep you from stopping their goal to take over the world."  
  
"You're kidding me..." Ariadne stood as well, "They aren't even interested in ruling."  
  
"Is that what your excuse for containing all of them is gonna be?" Zell yelled, as he, Lynne, and Edgar stood from the grass.  
  
"I admit," Caraway nodded, "It is a little over the top," he waved a hand at several of his reinforcement soldiers, "But the people will believe it, especially since my daughter will corroborate with the story. She never really gave up her powers, you know. She just fooled all of you into thinking she had."  
  
Zell shuddered, "So is the power of a Sorceress automatically corrupt?"  
  
"I don't know," Caraway responded, "And I don't care. It serves my purposes. I will have all of the Guardians, and my daughter will have all of the magic. I say that we deserve for things to finally go right in our lives, don't you?"  
  
One soldier stepped from among the rest, and then focused his gun on the small group.  
  
"You all went insane after the Guardians killed you," Caraway explained, "I suppose that that kind of a death would cause anyone to become undead, so we had to shoot you with bullets specially made by Odine to kill the undead in one hit. They also happen to be good at killing humans in one shot."  
  
  
The soldier fired at Ariadne, who gasped in shock. Eric jumped in front of her, and then collapsed into her, with a hole in his stomach from the blast he'd taken for her.  
  
"Oh no," Ariadne crouched low over him, "Why did you do that?"  
  
"Don't be sad, girl," Caraway's voice seemed a bit farther away, "Your turn will come soon enough."  
  
The sniper fired four more times in quick succession, and the other four fell to the ground.  
~  
  
*blinks* uh... Please don't kill me!  
  
I think I know how things will work out... *flinches* I really do think I know how this will work out... 


	15. The Guardians need new bodies, can they ...

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
Sorry about the really long wait, I had a weeklong break, and then I was in a tizzy/panic about a research paper, so I've been monkeying with this for almost three weeks.   
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 15  
  
The small group decided to meet in a different location, and they dragged Odine into their impromptu meeting. When everyone had reached the little back room of the library, Cid nodded at the young men and women who were the Library Committee. The members turned and left the area; their jobs were to keep anyone else from coming into the study area until the little band was finished.  
  
"I am curious as to how you know zat zose Guardians were captured," Odine hissed in his curious manner.  
  
Max sat curled into one of the high-backed chairs with his feet tucked closely to the rest of his body, "I can feel them in my mind. At all times, I know where all of them are. It doesn't mean I can always communicate with them, but if they want, they can relate a message to me at any time."  
  
"How are we going to help them?" Edea stood off to one side of the small enclosure, "Two Gardens are under his control, either through martial means or through the use of magic, and this one is certainly being observed."  
  
"We take Odine with us," Max glared at the scientist as the latter moved to voice an objection, "And head to the tomb. We have to try saving the SeeDs that were sent there. For some of them, it may already be too late."  
  
"For all of zem it iz too late!" Odine's pride in his machinery surfaced in an outburst, "Zose bullets were designed to kill any undead creatures in one hit!"  
  
"That's the key though," Irvine snorted, "They're meant to kill the undead in one hit, but you still have to aim right to kill those who are still living."  
  
Odine was shocked into thoughtful silence, "I suppose zat vould be right."  
  
"If we have Odine with us, this Garden is still safe," Cid pointed out hopefully, "And maybe any SeeDs who aren't presently in any of the Gardens can seek this one out as a safe haven."  
  
"That will only work until Caraway decides to attack," Squall rubbed his scar, "There are three other Gardens, and I suspect he has control, or access to the controls of all three of them."  
  
Max nodded, "That's why we're going straight to him."  
  
"Wait," Irvine sputtered, "What about the SeeDs in the other Gardens? Won't they get killed if we act?"  
  
"Who'll tell Caraway what we're up to if Odine is with us?" Squall directed a quirked eyebrow at the scientist in question, while said doctor looked quite queasy.  
  
~  
  
"Thank you for surrendering without a fight," Rinoa smiled gently at Seifer, "I really didn't want to kill you."  
  
Seifer growled low in his throat as he continued to hold his hands within her vision, "Why?"  
  
"My father was always angry that he could never Junction a Guardian Force," she shrugged, "And I've never gotten what I truly want or deserve."  
  
"You deserve a swift kick in the," Seifer started.  
  
"Now, now, Seify," Rinoa used a twisted nickname that was uncomfortably close to Selphie's, "That kind of language isn't needed here."  
  
"I wasn't gonna say 'ass,' Rinoa," Seifer grinned at her outrage in his sneaking the word in anyway, "I was just gonna say you needed a kick in the throat. It's a much more permanent and suitable punishment."  
  
"Who are you to talk of punishment?!" Rinoa exploded, "I've done nothing wrong! It's you SeeD's who've wronged me. It's you Orphanage children who've wronged me! You've excluded me at every turn that you could, and you took away what I wanted most!"  
  
Seifer's eyes widened. Rinoa wasn't just mad; she wasn't even truly Rinoa. He wished he could contact the others with this information, but knew that he couldn't even get out of the room.  
  
Rinoa stalked up to Siefer, "You all had it so easy," she growled, "The power was practically handed to you!"  
  
Seifer had a feeling that the conversation was going nowhere, and decided to let the maniac woman vent. Perhaps if he didn't encourage her...  
  
"Are YOU IGNORING ME?!" she screamed shrilly.  
  
-Forget that thought- Seifer sighed mentally.  
  
~  
  
"As much as that explains, it still leaves out how the Guardians were so easily captured," Edea questioned.  
  
Odine cackled, "Zey were captured by my creations!"  
  
"How was that possible?" Edea directed a glare at the over-enthusiastic scientist.  
  
Max tried to explain, "They don't have bodies that are corporeal in this dimension, and have to have one to survive, especially now that all of the Sorceress powers are locked up. They will refuse to submit to the Junctioning any longer, so they need real bodies, bodies of their own. Without them, they are incredibly vulnerable to such things as his bangle machinations."  
  
Edea frowned, "You're sure they won't submit to being Junctioned?"  
  
Max nodded, "They only did before because it was necessary to save both dimensions. Just because you've never seen theirs, doesn't mean that it isn't tied in with ours. How else do you think Diablos and Doomtrain are summoned using items?"  
  
"Why can't they show up in their own forms?" Irvine asked.  
  
"The manifestations you've seen so far are only what their powers make of them," Max paused, "That was confusing," he closed his eyes and tried to explain again, "What you have seen thus far is not their true bodies, but what their powers are. Not even that sounds right," Max growled under his breath, "It's really hard to explain without sounding like I'm totally insane."  
  
"They didn't feel like animals in our heads," Squall pointed out, "Does that mean that they are likely an equivalent to humans?"  
  
Max nodded, "It's just that the difference in the dimensions kind of... warp them."  
  
"No wonder they can't survive long in our dimension," Irvine blinked, recalling year old memories, "What about that dimension you were locked in? The one where we couldn't summon them, but they could still speak with us, and then there were Greiver, Tiamat, and Phoenix, actually having forms of their own. It seemed like the one where Diablos lived in that funny little lamp because they certainly didn't jump in and out of that dimension while we spoke to them."  
  
"I don't know anything about it," Max shrugged, "What ever it was, I think it was dispelled by the time I woke up. You might have to tell me more as we head to the tomb."  
  
Odine got a look of intense curiosity on his face, "And I vould like to hear about zis new dimension too."  
  
~  
  
It is starting to move around in a weird way, so I can't even hope to tell you what the intent is... I certainly don't like the sound of Rinoa not being herself...  
  
~Then again, I just don't like her at all. But I did not set out to make her the evil person of this story that she has turned out. I am willing to give her rope to save herself, or to hang herself with.~ 


	16. Saving Grace

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 16  
  
"I can't believe this!" Selphie yelped, "We get here, only to be promptly told that we can't do anything!"  
  
The short brunette marched back and forth in the room, in her semblance of pacing. The major difference was that she wasn't wandering in anything remotely resembling a straight line. At this point, she wandered toward one of the room's chairs, and lightly kicked it with a booted foot. She winced in pain as it was quickly made clear that the chair was harder than her foot.  
  
"Calm down," Xia sighed, and leaned back in her chair, a safe distance from Selphie's ranting, "We'll get through this."  
  
"Yeah?" Maria challenged lightly, she had flung herself onto the couch in the room, and quietly simmered since they arrived, "How? We're under military arrest from both the Galbadian Army and the Galbadian Garden!"  
  
"It's worse than you think," Quistis returned from her meeting with the new Galbadian Garden Headmaster, "Trabia Garden has also been immobilized, by Rinoa, and Balamb is under inspection by Odine, who happens to be working with Caraway."  
  
"Has anyone been hurt?" was Selphie's first question upon recovering from the initial shock.  
  
"That is, as of yet, unconfirmed," Quistis paused, "But it doesn't look good for Edgar, Zell, Eric, Ariadne, and Lynne. Caraway ambushed them."  
  
~  
  
"So what do we do now?" Irvine blinked as he, Squall, Max, Edea and Odine stepped out of the craft Odine had used to reach Balamb. They had set it down just outside the entrance to the Tomb, where there was still grass, and the large blocks of stone paving had yet to start.  
  
"You are going to make sure that Odine doesn't go anywhere," Squall pointed a finger at the scientist, "While we try to collect them."  
  
Irvine nodded, and pointed his shotgun at Odine.  
  
Squall led the other two the short distance to the mouth of the Tomb. They paused just as they reached the stone squares, seeing the five bodies very nearly blocking the depths. One still form lie almost within the mouth of the structure. A second had fallen just in front of the first, while one rested on either side of the first two. The fifth was somewhat separated from the others, as though he'd tried to evade the bullets for a short distance. Except, he appeared to have been running at the gunmen, rather than from them.  
  
Edea gasped and rushed to the nearest. She gently touched the blonde tuft of hair at the top of Zell's head, and then turned to look at Squall, "You have curative magic, don't you?"  
  
Squall shook his head, "I'm not one of the fortunate that can use magic without a Guardian."  
  
Max crouched and checked the pulses of each individual, "So you stopped carrying Potions and Phoenix downs too?"  
  
"No," Squall shook his head, and fished one from his pockets, "She just asked about the magic."  
  
"Just because you're a instructor now," Max teased slightly, "Doesn't mean you have to stop thinking for yourself."  
  
"Is this really a time for being playful?" Edea hissed slightly, "We have five gravely injured SeeDs here, let us not waste time, and help them."  
  
"Make that four," Max sighed as he stood, turning away from Eric's body, "I don't think we can do anything for him, his injuries were too serious, too long ago, and even Phoenix downs can't do enough for him."  
  
"Poor Merinda," Edea sighed, "She's an orphan now, and all but guaranteed to find her home in one of the Gardens."  
  
"I feel sorry for Ariadne when she wakes too," Max nodded, "He took a blast meant for her. She's going to all but hate herself for it."  
  
"How do you know this?" Edea looked up at him, shocked.  
  
"I'm not completely certain," Max seemed to be trying to cover for a mistake, "But, since she's directly behind him, I assume that she was behind him. If that was the case, then he may have jumped in front of her and took a shot for her, as I already said."  
  
"Somehow," Squall raised an eyebrow, "I get the feeling that you're hiding something from us."  
  
Edea sighed, "But now is not the time to worry about it, we have to revive who we can while we can. Do either of you have a means for this?"  
  
Squall cursed under his breath, "Irvine was the one we'd given the items to, so we don't have anything."  
  
"Don't ask questions, because I won't answer them, but I'll fix the problem," Max muttered, "Edea, you still carry a few spells, right?"  
  
"But I've never carried the ones we need for this," Edea continued to crouch beside Zell's body.  
  
"They don't have to be curatives even," Max shrugged, "Any kind of magic will work."  
  
"I have a few of my own," Squall offered, "I never stopped carrying spells just because I can't use them."  
  
Max nodded, "Do you happen to have any element-based ones?"  
  
"Why?" Squall asked as he nodded.  
  
"I told you not to ask questions," Max shrugged, and borrowed magic from Squall, "but it's my intent to help both the Guardians and these folks by, well, you could say I am going to summon the Guardians, but that's not quite the extent of it. Let's just leave it that the Guardians will be in control of their bodies until their minds heal from the psychological damage that likely will occur from being dragged back from the brink of death."  
  
"So what are you going to do for Eric?" Edea looked at the tall man's body.  
  
"Do you really want to know all the details at this point?" Max raised an eyebrow as he cast the strongest spells in quick succession of one another.  
  
~  
  
It is starting to move around in a weird way, so I can't even hope to tell you what the intent is... I certainly don't like the sound of Rinoa not being herself... ~I don't hope to know the ramifications that would or could occur with such magic. I'm only hoping to understand the story again.~ 


	17. Temporal issues

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 17  
  
The fiery, aching pain in his arm alerted Max that he was actually awake. It was centered in the front of his right shoulder, just between the bone clusters that formed the working part of it. Trying not to jar it, Max opened his eyes to look around. It was a small room, but still more decorated than a prisoner could hope for. The walls were deep purple, with garnet curtains hanging from the high-placed rafters. Though it was something of a stretch while nearly immobile, Max could see that there was a thick gray rug covering the floor. The walls were decorated by lines that were strewn across the surface, but Max couldn't make any sense of them, except for on the wall right next to his side. In the tiny area right next to him, Max could make out that the walls were actually carved into, and the lines formed pictures, as though they were meant to be used in printmaking.  
  
The most common figure as far as he could see was what appeared to be a young woman wearing two outfits. At one point she stood in the middle of a room with a tall young man holding his arms raised, and at another, she was apparently screaming at a group of people whose details were quite a bit more vague. In a third, she was crouched low to the ground, with another figure super-imposed upon hers. He almost recognized the long hair hanging over the shoulder of the taller woman, but was jerked out of his ponderings by the slamming of a door.  
  
"Good, you're awake," Aura stalked to the pallet, crouched, and jabbed a finger at Max's shoulder, "Is it still hurting? You ruined the plan, you know, by turning. I would have been able to spare you a lot of pain and sorrow if you'd just let me shoot you."  
  
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Max blinked up at her after biting back a yelp of pain, "How would my dying be of use to you?"  
  
"Not of use to me, but of use to you," Aura's eyes seemed actually to fill with tears, "If you'd died, then you'd be spared pain in the past."  
  
"Um, Aura," Max closed his eyes, "I never wanted to be serious when I told you that I thought you were crazy, but you're getting dangerously close to it now."  
  
"Hmph," Aura grumbled, "Have you looked at the walls yet?" she waved a hand generally at the room, "The pictures carved into these walls depict the past. This room shows the most hidden secrets of all SeeDs. They've been here since before SeeD was a concept in ancient Cid's mind!"  
  
Max blinked some more and focused again on the pictures directly in front of him, "And the people?"  
  
"They're my ancestors!" Aura grinned, "I happened upon this building by accident during my last Exam. I wandered in by myself as everyone else slept. After finding all of this, I realized that it was telling a story. It all starts at the mouth of the hidden passage behind the dungeons of this castle, and ends here."  
  
"Aura," Max blinked, "This is you!"  
  
"No kidding," she grinned, "I am going to find a way to send my consciousness back in time, to possess Rinoa Heartilly. She's the one who last bore the Sorceress' gift. If I can control her, maybe I can fix time. Did you know that some of the greatest SeeDs of all time never had children?"  
  
Max shuddered, "No, but I'm not surprised, not everyone does."  
  
Aura grabbed his chin, "You know the SeeDs Eric and Ariadne, surely? How they met trying to start the Cetra Garden, and then fell in love? No one knows the whole story, except me! It's here, in this building!"  
  
"But not in this room?" Max winced, as her hand was causing him to shift his weight and his shoulder, "I didn't even know they'd cared for one another."  
  
"No one does!" Aura giggled suddenly, "But they did, his daughter Merinda is documented as being raised by Ariadne, and no one could figure out why he didn't raise her himself. But it's noted here, that they were attacked by the military official, Caraway, who killed Eric, since he'd jumped in front of Ariadne to take a gunshot that was meant to blow off her head. It took out a good portion of his stomach, and by the time anyone had reached them, Eric was long gone. The other four in that effort were saved though, because Caraway had assumed that the bullets would kill anyone, living, or undead in one hit, so only ordered them to shoot, not shoot to kill. The first shot was almost expected to be blocked, so they shot at the shortest person's head."  
  
"How are you figuring this out?" Max tried to sit up fully, but Aura shoved him back to the pallet, "These pictures are, at best, vague representations of the past."  
  
"You have to understand them," Aura smiled again, "They speak to me."  
  
"So how was it that Caraway left them like that without making sure that they would stay dead?" Max blinked, "It's a logical thought that he'd have dealt with them to prevent anyone from reviving them."  
  
"Aside from not expecting them to survive the shots in the first place, he'd sent out his daughter and the Doctor Odine to the other two operating Gardens, and hadn't expected any SeeDs to sneak out of one, taking Odine with them so that he couldn't tell anyone."  
  
"So they brought the four back?" Max blinked, "How?"  
  
"The second group of SeeDs had someone with them who had an affinity with all Guardians," Aura watched Max's reaction with glee, "And now you know why it would have been better for you to have died."  
  
"Wait," Max squawked, "How in the hell would they have someone like me there? There weren't any recorded people like me in all of history, that was part of the reason they let me become a SeeD at all!"  
  
"Just because it isn't recorded, doesn't mean it didn't happen," Aura cackled as she stood and left the room, "Sleep well, Max, you have a busy life ahead of you!"  
  
~  
  
Ooookay... um... that's certainly tying things up... And behaving evilly. :P  
  
To K.N.W., I have to thank you for pointing out that Caraway wouldn't have left them behind, but in this case, I guess he did. My explanation isn't much better than the letting it happen was, but I guess we can call it an overall over confidence issue. He didn't think anyone could beat him, so he didn't cover all his bases. Even Generals are guilty of that once in a while. ^-^ 


	18. Death isn't always something to run from

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
~  
  
Chapter 18  
  
Squall stared at the four people who had, a few minutes earlier, been lying on the ground, near death.  
  
Zell was trying to stand straight, as though he had lost the memory of how to stand on two feet during the time he spent unconscious. When he focused his eyes, Edea and Squall noticed that his eyes were still blue, but they had shifted to an icy color, and it had taken over the rest of his eyes; the whites, and his pupils. Zell looked around and flinched. With a slight crackling sound, he encased himself in a thin layer of ice. As though the temperature was too warm, and the ice was a second skin for protection.  
  
Ariadne peered at her hands in a measure of surprise, and then gently brushed her arms together, as if reveling in the feel of her skin. Her green eyes had turned to a shade of bluish-green, as though they were viewed through the depths of the water. She glanced around as well, and then took a step toward the still body that had been Eric. Each step left a print, as though her shoes were soaked.  
  
Lynne seemed almost the same as before. His face rested in the same expression as it had before the ambush, but when he closed his eyes, the first difference was apparent. Even when his eyes were closed, the brown irises were visible, revealing either that the skin of his eyelids to be very thin, or that his eyes shone that bright. A breeze blew in the normally still air, and Lynne smiled lightly, showing another difference. Before, Lynne had always been nervous in the wind, for reasons he would not explain.  
  
In much the same manner as Ariadne, Edgar peered at his skin, but he did not brush his skin. Instead, he touched his hair, as though surprised that it were there. His eyes were white, all the way through; both his pupils and his irises were replaced. With the sun setting in the sky, Edgar seemed to get more and more tense, as though he did not like the darkness.  
  
Eric was the last to stand, and this action alone caused Edea and Squall to shudder, thinking he'd become a zombie of some kind. His amber irises were now glowing slightly. But the area that would normally be white was now black. Normally thin, Eric's skin now seemed stretched tightly over his bones, and Squall almost now felt about Eric as he had when dealing with Doomtrain. At this realization, Squall whispered the Guardian's name, and Eric flashed those black-and-amber eyes at him in acknowledgement.  
  
"For now, it would be easier if you call them by the names of the Guardians who have control," Max rubbed his temples, "Shiva, Leviathan, Pandemona, Alexander, and Doomtrain have decided to help us, and are currently healing the bodies of the four living ones."  
  
"What about Eric?" Edea breathed, not taking her eyes off the reanimated man.  
  
"When this is all over, we will have to bury him," Max sighed, "Doomtrain is keeping his body from decomposing, but it's not easy on her. That's part of the reason why he looks like a zombie."  
  
"We should probably keep his 'reanimation' a secret," Squall blinked, "As much as we can. That way we won't have to explain his disappearance and need for burial after all this is over."  
  
Eric-Doomtrain nodded, and a voice whistled through his mouth, not quite coming through his throat, but emanating from him all the same, "That will be an intelligent plan, but difficult to carry out."  
  
Leviathan spoke in a kind of raspy voice through Ariadne's mouth, "Seeing as how we quite intend to help you with all of our abilities."  
  
Shiva's words were like the sound of ice or glass ringing from impact with a spoon, dulled by their originating from Zell's mouth, "None of the other Guardians will be available. Ifrit, Siren and Quezacotl are assisting me with this one. The Brothers, Diablos, and Cerberus are helping Leviathan. Carbuncle, Cactuar, and Tonberry assist Pandemona, while Alexander is accepting aid from Bahamut, Odin and Eden."  
  
"Does that have anything to do with the extent of their injuries?" Squall blinked, "And why isn't anyone helping Doomtrain?"  
  
"Zell was the physically strongest of the five," the words breezed from Lynne's mouth and sounded right next to their ears, "and had the strongest will to live. Therefore he needs the least help. Ariadne's heart knows of Eric's death, and she mourns, needing Diablos to draw her out, and the other two also know the darkness particular to mourning."  
  
"Lynne was in great need of those like his nature, to keep him from merely pushing away assistance," Edgar's voice seemed to have no difference to it, though Alexander spoke through him, "while Edgar was actually the next closest to being irreparable."  
  
"None of the others can aid me in this," Eric's voice had that wet sound, like a person who has had a lung punctured still trying to speak, "I am the only one who can even be carried among the dead."  
  
"Now that you've had your questions answered," Max shrugged, "Shall we go scare the tar out of Odine?"  
  
The five Guardians produced their semblances of smirks and grins at the idea, while Edea and Squall stood and started for where they had left Irvine and Odine.  
  
Upon reaching them, Irvine blinked rapidly, "Um... what's going on? They all look different."  
  
"We'll explain later, but for now, Odine, your bullets weren't quite successful," Squall waved a hand at the five, "They are still living."  
  
Odine almost choked on the air he was breathing, "Zat is impossible! I vas told zat zere was at least one who died!"  
  
"Don't always believe what you hear," Max snorted, "Sometimes, death is harder to reach than you realize."  
  
"You sound as if you speak from experience," Odine looked at Max speculatively.  
  
"Perhaps I do," Max shrugged, "But does it matter? I'm not dying at this point. Get into the craft, everyone, we've got to find Caraway."  
  
~  
  
Ooookay... um... that's certainly tying things up... And behaving evilly. :P  
  
To K.N.W., You're getting dangerously close to my plans... hush, will you!. ^-^  
  
~Just carried out some minor edits, as with the rest. Hope it makes things a bit better, aside from giving me the opportunity to reread in preparation for beginning again.~ 


	19. Broken Teacups

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
Back from a long break and hoping to get this finished before the next one, I'm also making sure everyone knows that I'm only just ahead of you as to what's going on in this story. I learn it as I type it.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 19  
  
With sore arms and ears, Seifer listened to Rinoa until he couldn't take it any more.  
  
"D'you mind if I put my arms back at my sides?"  
  
Jerked to a dead stop in her outraged monologue, Rinoa paused, "Um, sure. Why don't we sit and make this a kind of social call, like it was supposed to be?"  
  
Seifer blinked. ~She goes from sweet to psycho and back in the blink of an eye. We are so totally-~  
  
"Were you listening?" Rinoa glared mildly and pointed to the seat across from where she now sat, holding out a cup of coffee.  
  
"Er," Seifer struggled for a response, "Sure, just a minute."  
  
Before sitting, Seifer waved his arms a bit, to restore the feeling that had drained out of them. Then he flopped into the heavily cushioned chair.  
  
"Really," Rinoa shook her head, "If you drop into that any harder, you'll break it. Now I know for certain that the children in Esthar Garden will need my teaching to get good manners. Between you being a rude little monster, Squally being anti-social, and that strange boy insulting his betters, they'll get it into their heads that they're mercenaries or something."  
  
Seifer blinked again, feeling that it was becoming a painful habit, "What do you mean, Garden ~is~ training them to be mercenaries."  
  
"Not any more," Rinoa smiled primly, "Now those rambunctious little children will be trained properly in the service of something right. They'll serve my father in a military fashion in his efforts to see me protected from the world. After all, no one can do anything about my powers anymore. Not with the Guardians dispersed, or in his control."  
  
"Wait," Seifer leaned forward, "your powers?"  
  
"Oh yes," Rinoa looked up from her coffee cup, a daintily decorated little pink thing, "I didn't tell you all. I put my powers into that silly little rock, but this sweet girl, Aura, gave them back. She told me that we would fix time this way."  
  
"What do you mean, 'fix time?' That's really kind of strange, don't you think?" Seifer started to feel a slow panic rising in his stomach, "I mean, isn't that what you guys did before? With beating me to a pulp and taking out Sorceress Ultimecia?"  
  
Rinoa looked at Seifer with shock, "That was fixing time? Oh, no, that was just mending something else that was broken. This will fix it so that my father will get the Guardians like he wants, and I can have what I want."  
  
"And just what is that?" Seifer snorted, "Your Squally-poo back?"  
  
Rinoa giggled, "Oh no, I never liked him like that. It wouldn't have worked out anyway. He's taken. Or at least, that's what Aura told me. I'll just believe her for now. But what I really want is to free Timber."  
  
Seifer wished he could have been standing so he could actually fall down in shock, "You're helping your father take over four Gardens, murder how many SeeDs, ruin the lives of how many children and adults, all so you can FREE TIMBER??"  
  
Rinoa nodded, pouting, "You don't have to be so loud."  
  
"With Deling dead," Seifer continued to yell, "Timber is ALREADY free! You KNOW that! You were at the ceremony where the damn city formally declared its freedom from Galbadia, and called itself a separately governed political base! How can you have forgotten that they're already free?"  
  
Rinoa blinked, her eyes glazing over, "What did you say?"  
  
Seifer choked, "Timber. Is. Free. What part of that don't you understand?"  
  
The tiny pink coffee cup shattered, its shards flew outward, lodging into the walls and narrowly missed giving Seifer new scars, and not just on his face. Rinoa's eyes had darkened from their normal chocolate brown to a deeper shade, all the way to a shade that weren't distinguishable from her pupils. She raised her hands to her face, and stared at them. Then she touched her face lightly and began to laugh. Rather than the light laugh Rinoa had driven everyone else mad with, which sounded like bells that were almost above human hearing, the laughter was tinnier, or at least sounded far off. Rinoa stood, and glared at Seifer.  
  
"You really aren't Rinoa," Seifer backed into the wall as the Sorceress crouched low to the ground to pick up one of the nearer shards, "Are you?"  
  
~  
  
"So what do we do?" Selphie started bouncing with a new level of energy.  
  
"We wait for word from the others," Quistis shook her head, "I can't think of anything else."  
  
Maria snorted, "Like hell. I've never known SeeDs to back down from a fight before, not even the Trabians. Especially not the Balambites. So we don't just sit and wait, we fight back! Who are here?"  
  
"SeeDs," Selphie started to warm up to the idea.  
  
"And SeeD trainees," Quistis glared mildly at Maria, "How do you intend we deal with their lack of experience?"  
  
Maria snorted again, "Just because the Balamb trainees don't see battle until after they've graduated doesn't mean that the Galbadians don't have a few under their belt. Irvine's a prime example of that. And that's not even including the experience gained when the Gardens were used to ram into one another."  
  
"But how do we keep from alerting the soldiers?" Selphie pointed at the doors, "They are occupying the Garden, you know."  
  
Maria grinned, "But they don't know their way around the Garden like the students, faculty and staff do. And since I'm native, we can get out of here, and enlist the aid of the more rebellious students and Instructors."  
  
Quistis sighed, "I still say it's too big a risk."  
  
"I heard a saying once that said something like, 'risk nothing, and lose nothing, but then again you have nothing to gain.' I do believe it applies," Maria tugged on Quistis' arm, "besides, don't you want to find out for certain what's going on?"  
  
"Come on Quisty," Selphie tugged on her other arm.  
  
Quistis looked skyward, as if asking for help, a decision or for patience. She got no answer, "Fine. Just don't complain later about-"  
  
"Let's get going, pessimist," Maria rushed to the back of the room, tapped several tiles on a decorative table and walked through the door revealed.  
  
"Wow!" Selphie crowed in a hoarse whisper.  
  
Looking at the closed door, Quistis whispered hoarsely, "What about if the soldiers check on us?"  
  
~  
  
I'm either building up to another plot twist or to the climax... but I'm not sure which. It's certainly not going to be a case of the helpless little girls waiting to be rescued.  
  
But perhaps they should have waited. 


	20. Interruption of Time, the fourth

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
  
~  
  
Chapter 20  
  
Aura sat in a chair with no cushions. Around her and her chair, the walls were a nondescript gray that would be an art teacher's nightmare if a student turned it in as an assignment. The only breaks in the dull gray were the two wooden doors. One of which led to the room Aura slept in, and the other led to the room where her former friend turned prisoner tried to recover. Luckily, there were no creatures trying to sneak up on her, as she was preoccupied, and was not paying attention.  
  
She fiddled with the small stone that hung around her throat on a thin leather cord. Though she was sure something was wrong with her fascination with it she found she couldn't help it. The more she touched it, the more she had to keep it. Sometimes she thought of how Max had turned at the exact wrong second and had survived. She'd known before shooting him that his life would be a living torture if he lived, and at the time she'd thought to spare him, but now, she was just mad that she couldn't figure out how to send herself back.  
  
Then she hit on it.  
  
The crystal was a fairly prominent graphic in the wall etchings, but mostly worn around people's necks. The way the drawings spoke, the stone drove mad all but a very small number. That number held among them the last Sorceress, the Sorceress who would destroy the world, and Max. Though she couldn't figure out why he could remain sane, Aura knew she didn't want to give it to him now. She thought about trying to pull the powers from the stone, but set that aside for later. For now, she would wander around to find new etchings.  
  
The walls were really rather drab except for them. Aura had never been fond of the color gray, especially not after her repeated failures to graduate from a Garden. Just thinking about Gardens made her so mad she wanted to scream.  
  
"Curse SeeD," she muttered to herself, "I wish a curse upon them all."  
  
"You're sounding more and more like Ultimecia is said to have spoken," the weakened voice spoke from the door where she'd been leaving Max.  
  
"What's it to you?" Aura glared.  
  
"Wouldn't it be ironic if the Sorceress that all SeeDs have trained to deal with only cursed the SeeDs because they'd flunked her out of Garden," Max leaned against the wall, still favoring his shoulder.  
  
Aura walked up to him, staring him evenly in the eyes, and poking the injured arm, "Wouldn't it just? And even more ironic that the tool to allow her to come into power would be a SeeD who'd once been her best friend but betrayed her like all the other SeeDs!"  
  
Wincing, Max gritted out, "I never betrayed you. I was willing to wait until I had all of the information. You're the one who shot me."  
  
Aura's palm cracked against his face, leaving a reddening mark, "How dare you!"  
  
"Do you really have to ask that?" Max muttered, "I could have handled it if you'd just disappeared. Eventually. I could have handled it if you'd given up and gotten married to some nameless guy and moved to a nameless place. But you shot me in the back. And you're pissed at me?"  
  
"You're a SeeD," she hissed, "You're just like the others. So proud to have passed, you don't bother to do anything to help others."  
  
"It was against the rules," Max met her eyes; cold, dark blue meeting deep brown, "And not even for you would I break that rule. Even though they were breaking it by randomly refusing to allow you to pass. Becoming a SeeD is something you earn, not something given. There was nothing I could do."  
  
"Yes there was," Aura hissed again, "You could have spotted it sooner!"  
  
"What makes you think I haven't already chased that argument around in my head like a puppy chasing its tail?" Max yelped, "I've told myself that, and the only response I've ever been able to come up with is to say, I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be looking! Our Garden has had a reputation for being the fairest of the four!"  
  
"SeeD are trained to look for corruption where it might not be," Aura grabbed the collar of his shirt and began dragging him behind her, "And since you failed in that, perhaps you can be made useful in another fashion."  
  
"What do you mean," Max bit out around the thuds and thumps of smacking into walls, as she didn't care if he hit them, "'Useful in another fashion?'"  
  
Aura paused for a bit and held the crystal up to his face, "I'm going to use you and your gifts with time, space and magic to activate this crystal. If I'm going to be given the name 'Ultimecia' by even those who I'd held closest to my heart, I may as well take on the role completely. I shall become the cursed witch of the future. I will destroy SeeD even before it began, but first! First, I will make sure you aren't any happier in your other life than I have been in my first!"  
  
~  
  
I hate it when stories do that. I really, really do. 


	21. Magic Monopoly

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
  
~  
  
Chapter 21  
  
'Rinoa' giggled, "Now that the farce is over, I don't have to act like a simpering little idiot."  
  
Seifer coughed, "Actually she didn't simper that bad, and she really wasn't an idiot. Just extremely naïve."  
  
"Really," the tinny voice displayed a remarkable amount of skepticism, "The histories portray her as a right numbskull."  
  
"That's the easy way out," Seifer rolled his eyes, "And I'll bet they tell everyone that I was hopeless."  
  
"No, actually, they liked to remark about how you changed your mind about following Sorceresses at some point and returned to aid your childhood friends in their later years."  
  
Seifer snorted, "Nah, I didn't change my mind," he shrugged, "I'd never really wanted to follow any in the first place, but when your mind is half taken with the idea of having returned to the only real mother figure you'd ever had, and half stuck dwelling on doing the impossible- becoming a knight when everyone is moving away from the feudal era, you get kind of tricked and trapped when you finally wake up and realize that who you've been working with has actually pitted you against the people she raised you with. So you're really-"  
  
"That is certainly another aspect of history they like to leave out," the person in control of Rinoa's body remarked, "Right up there with how many of you wound up never producing children."  
  
"I don't want to think about that," Seifer shuddered, "But who are you, and what do you want?"  
  
"I am Aura, didn't Rinoa tell you about me?" the voice giggled, returning to the use of Rinoa's actual voice, "And I just want to fix the past so that you'll never forget me as long as you live."  
  
~  
  
The craft touched down near the Galbadian Garden. The soldiers surrounding the Garden sent a handful of troops to investigate the craft, and only found Odine, who swore up and down that the dead could live again, and he just wanted to go back to his lab to make inventions to prove it.  
  
The group sent to check on the craft returned to report, and discovered that the others who had been guarding were no longer there. They ventured into the Garden to find them, only to meet with a force of SeeDs and cadets fully armed and aiming at them.  
  
"Go back to your General and tell him to-" Maria yelled at the soldiers.  
  
"No, Maria, why don't we subject them to the same treatment we've had from them," Quistis grinned, "Peaceful incarceration. They were polite when they arrived and told everyone in Garden that we were now under the control of General Caraway. It is only fair to return the favor. You soldiers are now under Garden's jurisdiction. Any of you that wish to resist will find yourselves shot. Those that follow quietly will have rooms supplied, and will be treated with respect."  
  
"BOOYAKA!" Selphie jumped into the air and screamed at the top of her lungs, "That'll show you lunkheads!"  
  
"So much for rescuing them," Squall drawled as he leaned in the doorway, behind the captured soldiers.  
  
"Edea," Max looked at the soldiers, and at the older woman, "Would you remain here, to assist the SeeDs of Galbadia Garden in their holding of these soldiers?"  
  
Edea nodded, "I think it would be best. At this time I am more of a hindrance than an aid. But if you need me, do not hesitate to let me know."  
  
Selphie ran up to Irvine, "WHOOHOO!!!" she grabbed one of his arms and proceeded to spin him around until he complained.  
  
"Seffie, stop, please," he whined, "I'm gettin' dizzy."  
  
"I think we can leave now," Max started back out the door.  
  
Quistis stepped around the cluster of soldiers and approached Squall, "What happened? We heard that Odine landed at Balamb, and that Rinoa is controlling Trabia."  
  
"For all we know she may still be, but Odine is a little preoccupied right now," Squall smirked, "He's seen a few things that make him want to run back to his lab, regardless of whether or not he's agreed to help Caraway gain power as the man in sole custody of the Sorceress and the Guardians."  
  
"So that's his purpose?" Maria yelped, "He wants a monopoly on magic?"  
  
~  
  
I really hope that she doesn't kill Seifer. I was angry enough when Eric got killed, and as much of a pain as Seifer is, even he deserves to see the end of this, though Eric won't. What do you all think? 


	22. Frozen

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory. There are also slight hints of couples developing, but they're so slight as to almost not exist. This might change later. I say again, this is gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
My apologies for the long wait, if anyone's still watching. Due to computer and server problems, I couldn't access this for three weeks... so I'm only now able to add on.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 22  
  
"The others weren't in the best of shape, so don't be surprised to see some changes in them," Irvine tried to warn the girls, "I mean, they were really hurt."  
  
"In other words," Quistis raised an eyebrow, "you're saying what?"  
  
"They were as good as dead," Squall snapped, "And we had to allow the Guardians to take over their bodies in order to save them."  
  
"You sound as if you resent this," the spoon against glass sounding voice caused Quistis to shudder as she saw Zell's ice covered body, "Do we leave them? They have nearly healed."  
  
Squall groaned, "That wasn't the way I meant it," he rubbed his scar, "Besides, we let you do this as much for your own sakes as we did theirs."  
  
"Good save," Lynne's voice surprised Quistis, Maria and Selphie by seeming to sound against their ears, though he stood at least ten feet from them, "We needed their help as much as they needed ours. We want to help tamp down this Sorceress and her father."  
  
"Because they're trying to capture you all again," Quistis pointed at Eric, "And what about him? Was he killed?"  
  
"Yes," Max glanced at the reanimated corpse, "But because Doomtrain is well-versed in the effects of various venoms and toxins, she can also reverse her abilities. The effect is a temporary staving off of the rotting that comes with death."  
  
"Ew," Selphie whimpered, "Is it safe to hug her- um him, uh," she paused, confused.  
  
"I would prefer you didn't," Doomtrain spoke with the sound of a punctured lung again, making Maria cover her mouth in shock, "Though the sentiment is noted and appreciated by both of us."  
  
"Wait," Squall's eyes were wide with shock, "He died, how would he still-"  
  
"He is currently among the undead," Max patted Maria lightly on the shoulder, "though no amount of holy water or any other status relieving items can recover it. When Doomtrain leaves his body, or should she run out of strength, his body will return to death. There is no other way about it. We'll just have to keep others from trying to follow him in grief."  
  
Selphie's eyes were drawn to Ariadne, "What about her? Did she die?"  
  
"No, but she'll wish she did," Irvine sighed, "So what are we gonna do now?"  
  
"After we confiscate the aircraft and leave the good doctor here," Max pushed Odine out of the craft, and the scientist was so busy contemplating the latest inventions he could concoct, he didn't notice, "We'll free Seifer from Aura."  
  
"Er," Irvine tipped his hat back, "Don't you mean, Rinoa? And who is Aura?"  
  
Max paused, and then paled, "I may have meant both of them. I'm not sure yet, but all the same we need to get going to make sure she doesn't cause the second fatality of this venture she's madly gone on."  
  
~  
  
"Ow," Seifer groaned as he regained consciousness, "Did anyone get the registration number of that T-board that ran me down?"  
  
"I'd call you sleeping beauty, but that would be my job," Rinoa's voice had returned to normal, and the face that peered at Seifer seemed to be hers.  
  
"Rinoa?" Seifer felt he had to make sure of whether he was speaking to the slightly innocent Sorceress, or the rather deadly one.  
  
"To a degree," Rinoa flashed a grin at him that looked alien on her face, "I figured you'd be more comfortable as a prisoner if you were outfitted as one. So I chained you to this wall. Trabia is rather cold this time of year though, so I suppose this could also be termed an execution. The others are in their Gardens, and all the little SeeDs and cadets here are," she smirked, "otherwise occupied, so you'll be here till you freeze. I estimate it would normally take about two hours for you to suffer hypothermia, but since the sun will set in one hour, you'll have maybe an hour and a half till the creatures come out for dinner."  
  
"You're sick," Seifer tugged at the chains on his wrists, then winced as they dug in, "How can you do this? Rinoa wouldn't have even been able to think of something like this, much less carry it out."  
  
"I told you I was only her, to a degree," the girl shook her head, "the stories all speak of Ultimecia having white or silver hair, I wonder how it came to happen. They say she hated SeeD; again, I want to know why. I figure you people would know best."  
  
"She'd already had those features by the time they encountered her," Seifer eyed the diminutive brunette, "So what exactly are you after?"  
  
"I'm not out to free Timber," she shrugged, "or to take over the world. Right now, I just want to gain power, to learn more about the famous SeeDs that eliminated Ultimecia. I want to find out more about this crystal," she moved as to pull on something around her neck, only to find that Rinoa's was bare of decoration, then snorted, "I don't have the means to bring myself to this time, but I certainly can take over the weak-minded."  
  
Seifer snorted, "I never thought to have that confirmed about her in quite this manner."  
  
"Keep laughing, Seifer Almasy," Rinoa walked out into the snowy fields, "Until the sun sets anyway," she climbed onto a chocobo, waved, and rode off.  
  
Seifer tugged on the chains again, until they bit into his wrists, "Damn, she knew I hate pain. Guess she's really done research on this. I hate it when I run into someone who prepares that much. It makes life so much harder. Guess I can just wait until sunset."  
  
After a few minutes, Seifer started to shiver, even though he was still trying to ignore the cold. When his teeth started to chatter he looked at the sky above his head. The fiery oranges and golden yellows helped him forget the cold for a few seconds and gave him an idea.  
  
"Yeah," he snorted, "Let's see how long I can imagine hot, cooked food when I'm about to freeze to death. Lessee, I've always liked roasts. They get cooked for who knows how many hours to make them tender and easy to chew. Wait, maybe this won't work. I just keep thinking about the scavengers getting a Seifer-cicle."  
  
Continuing to watch the sunset, Seifer realized he'd lost track of time, "Damn, she said I'd have about two hours 'til I had hypothermia, but I don't know how long its been since then. I don't know how long 'til the sun fully sets either. I'm cold. I'm bored too," he snorted, "I never thought I'd be bored out of my mind just before I froze to death. I always thought that people were busy until they died. Guess I get to not only die of freezing but to die of BOREDOM!!!"  
  
His yell echoed around the snowy field, and Seifer almost thought he heard some thing respond to it. Blinking he yelled again, "I'M BORED!"  
  
Another sound led him to believe something was actually approaching. Seifer decided he'd rather let the creatures of Bika field rip him to shreds before sunset even than to freeze, so he yelled one more time, "I'M BORED OUT OF MY MIND!!!"  
  
"What mind?" Squall yelled back.  
  
Seifer yelled at the top of his lungs in an incomprehensible stream, thinking he was being tortured even worse just before he died.  
  
"Squall, is he always this nutty?" Max plugged his fingers into his ears, "I believe the volume, but the lack of coherency..."  
  
Unfazed, Eric staggered up to Seifer, and grabbed each chain link that held the manacles around the slightly shorter man's wrists. He tugged just a bit on them and watched as Seifer fell mute, and dropped his wrists to his sides.  
  
"You aren't some crazy hallucination that I made up just before dying," Seifer spoke through chattering teeth.  
  
"You're starting to suffer from hypothermia," Max tapped the fingers of each of Seifer's hands, "At least she left you the gloves, so you won't lose your fingers."  
  
Seifer thought about flinging himself at the others and pretending to be a rescued damsel in distress, but by the expressions, he figured they wouldn't appreciate it.  
  
"Don't even think seriously about it," Squall apparently saw the gleam of mischief in his eyes all the same, "We're trying to find Rinoa."  
  
"She left," Seifer was still shivering, "But d'you think you could help me out of here before I freeze to death anyway?"  
  
~  
  
Something about that didn't feel right. I'm not sure what. Maybe I'm not all that good at writing Seifer all by himself and about to freeze to death. He seems a bit like Zell, Selphie, and Rinoa combined... but who knows what imminent death will cause a person to do? 


	23. Body snatchers

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
My apologies for the long wait, if anyone's still watching. Due to computer and server problems, I couldn't access this for three weeks... so I'm only now able to add on.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 23  
  
"Sir, we have not received any reports from the troops stationed at Galbadia Garden," a soldier fearfully informed General Caraway.  
  
"None?" a deceptively calm response.  
  
"Yes sir," the soldier knew better though, and mentally prepared himself to run as fast as he could as soon as he was allowed to leave the office, "Not since 800 hours."  
  
"That was four hours ago," Caraway's voice dropped into a growl, "Why wasn't I informed sooner?"  
  
The soldier coughed, really hoping that the General had been in a good mood before. He was known to fire the messenger, even if he didn't kill them, if they brought bad news of this magnitude, "We tried, sir. Your secretary informed us that we would have to wait through proper protocol until it reached the proper urgency."  
  
"And you let that stop you?"  
  
Another cough, "Yes sir. After the first failure to report, she deemed it only a C class emergency."  
  
"And you would allow a civilian's judgment stand above yours in military proceedings?"  
  
The soldier began to feel ill, though he didn't show it, "Yes sir, we didn't see any other alternative."  
  
"Now that you have relayed the information of the failure of my men to report, you can relay to the other messengers under your command, and the command of your direct superior, that every last one of you is discharged."  
  
The soldier left the room and as soon as the door closed behind him, allowed his head to sag. He really hated being in a military unit whose commander was like a corporation's CEO. Job security was almost nonexistent.  
  
~  
  
The dark-haired woman consulted her chronometer for the time, then burrowed just a bit deeper into the heavy clothing she wore to guard against the cold. -I can't wait until I reach Estharian lands. It's too damn cold out here for my tastes.-  
  
She traveled on the chocobo until she reached the coastline. Pausing for a bit, she pushed the large bird into the shallows to run onto the northern peninsula of the Centran continent.  
  
As soon as she reached it, she released the chocobo to go back to its forest, and started to walk to her own secret lab. -Time to release myself from this little fool. I'm tired of playing stupid. I'll leave her somewhere where she won't get killed, as I may need to use her again later, but for now, she is utterly useless.-  
  
Upon reaching the small structure, the dark-haired woman pulled a panel from one of her multiple pockets and pushed a button. The door sounded with a series of chirps, and she echoed them with the device in her hand. It then slid open to reveal a long cot, and an older woman lying on it.  
  
The younger woman suddenly collapsed to the floor, and the older woke to the sound. Climbing out of the cot, she pulled a spare from the wall, and placed the fallen girl on it. She then walked to a back wall in the small building and typed a sequence of characters via a keyboard that was embedded into it. After typing the sequence, the woman staggered back to her cot and fell back to sleep.  
  
~  
  
For once, I'm ahead of you guys in what's going on! I know what's happening now... kinda. At least with the old woman and the younger one. Tee hee. 


	24. Interruption of Time, the fifth

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
  
~  
  
Chapter 24  
  
"I think it's finally time," Aura tossed a few stray hairs over her shoulder, and then turned to look at the young man who had collapsed against the wall near her after she'd released him from her helter-skelter jog through the halls, "Pity you aren't going to see the results, hm?"  
  
Leaning into the wall as though his bones were melting, the person she spoke to gasped for air, the pain and the exhaustion of his lungs from trying to keep up in the forced run were not making it easier. His entire body shook with the breaths he was fighting for, and even though he gingerly held his right side still, he was beaten up from the reckless path Aura had made through her new home, as he thought she called it. Still focused on breathing, he ignored her question for a few seconds.  
  
"I know you can shift your own body through time and space," Aura smirked, "but have you ever tried just moving minds, or another person's mind or body?"  
  
"Why would I have bothered?" Max looked up at her in shock, "It's madness to try developing that kind of control over an ability like this. It's too unpredictable in the first place."  
  
"Someone had that kind of control," Aura reminded him, "Or have you forgotten about Ellone?" after a few seconds of glaring at him, she fiddled with the stone around her neck distractedly, "She was recorded as having shifted minds through time in several instances."  
  
"But she was only able to shift the minds of those she knew to the bodies of those she knew, and those shifted couldn't affect anything where they were," Max winced as he pulled his left hand from his right shoulder, wishing she'd seen fit to actually treat it, "Besides, she only shifted people into the past."  
  
"That's all I want either," Aura's face was contorted by the smirk on her face, and it was only made worse when the stone flared sharply, as Max had not seen it do since before she'd shot him, which made him incredibly nervous, "I only want to visit, for now. Perhaps later we'll work on getting my mind shifted to the point that I can control events. Maybe I will even be able to see personally what the people who defeated Ultimecia were like."  
  
"So you haven't decided to call yourself that yet?"  
  
Aura slapped him sharply and then swung the same hand in a backward swing to strike his shoulder as well, "I am not Ultimecia. I was trying to join SeeD to fight against her! It is not my fault those cursed fools didn't see that I would be useful to them!"  
  
"It was your fault though," Max gasped, "That you turned against the people you called friends. It is your fault that your own family is no longer living in this world. Your fault that-"  
  
Aura stalked up to him and shoved the bridge of her hand between the thumb and forefinger against his throat until his head was forced against the wall and his Adam's apple was almost pressed fully against his windpipe, "You've no right to speak of such things, traitor. If you had not turned around as you did, you would be in the same state as they, and would not have to suffer what comes next. Ultimecia is coming soon, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Those who are not among the living when she arrives will not suffer. And you will suffer doubly as you have a life yet to live. And friends yet to lose."  
  
Unable to ask with words, Max tried to convey the question with his eyes.  
  
"I know you want to know what I'm talking about," Aura grinned suddenly and released him to fall to the floor, "But I won't tell you. You'll learn soon enough. Now stand up and follow me, or I'll drag you again. We need to get started so I can figure out who will be weak minded enough that I can take them over."   
  
~  
  
Well, so much for me knowing what was coming next. I love it when they do that. Not really, but I had to use sarcasm somewhere, didn't I? 


	25. Time After Time

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
  
Forgive the extended vacation, if you will, I got caught up in classes. Really.  
  
~  
  
Chapter 25  
  
Seifer held the cup of hot chocolate in his hands, wishing he dared drink it, but having been warned to warm back up slowly, and not as fast as humanly possible, he just held it. And listened.  
  
"Now would you mind explaining what you meant by Aura? Who is she and what has she to do with any of this?" Irvine not so quietly yelped at Max.  
  
"Aura's a young woman I knew... a long time ago," Max sighed deeply, and started to continue.  
  
Seifer snorted, "Yeah right, she said something about wanting to investigate Ultimecia, and she spoke as if it was all ancient history. If you knew her a long time ago, you'd have met her before any of this happened."  
  
Max winced, "I hadn't expected her to be so talkative. She must have really gotten tired of pretending."  
  
Squall blinked, "Pretending what?"  
  
"To be stupid," Seifer chuckled wryly, "She'd been behaving as Rinoa for quite a while, though she didn't say exactly how long. I figure that would be enough to drive anyone mad."  
  
"She already is," Max had by now almost curled completely into himself. He stared blankly at a wall over Eric's head, not even registering that the skin stretching over his face was seemingly being pulled even tighter as he stared at the wall, "That blasted stone. If I'd known then, what the stone itself was..."  
  
"What stone? What it was?" Quistis pounced on the only thing that made sense of what he said.  
  
Maria blinked, "You couldn't possibly mean the stone we used to bind Sorceress powers permanently, could you?"  
  
Max flinched, both suddenly realizing what was happening to Eric's corpse and Doomtrain, and at Maria's perceptiveness, "Actually, that's exactly what I was speaking of. When we threw it randomly, it was lodged into a stone growth, until a few hundred years from now, a random gunshot dislodges it, and it comes into Aura's possession, and possesses her," he shrugged, "If I'd known when I threw it, that it was the stone Aura had around her neck,"  
  
Seifer blinked, "THAT was what she was talking about!?"  
  
At the same time, Selphie yelped, "A few hundred years from now?!"  
  
Max blinked at them both, "Um, yeah. She's from just before Ultimecia surfaced. I'm pretty sure that Ultimecia was only months from coming into power and eliminating all the SeeDs of the world when I left."  
  
"Left?" Squall's quiet drawl was on the other end of the volume scale from the yelping that came before, but just as incredulous, "Explain that."  
  
"I don't know that we have time," Max tried to talk his way out of it now that he realized he may have told them too much too quickly.  
  
"Make the time," Xia hissed, while the others glared.  
  
"He can't," Eric's body leaned forward, and the others could almost swear they heard flesh actually rip as he did so, "We are running out of time for this one. She will have to be dealt with now, so that there is something to bury of the man."  
  
~~  
  
When three dozen soldiers stepped out of their crafts at the entrance to the Tomb, they were shocked to see only a scientist muttering randomly about inventions that bound the powers of Guardians to a person's body, rather than the Guardian itself.   
  
"Hasn't he already come up with things like that?" One soldier whispered to another.  
  
"Dunno, I don't keep up on things like that," the other responded.  
  
Their superior officer shushed them before the already volatile temper of General Caraway could get carried away. The General meanwhile was delivering a tirade to the preoccupied scientist.  
  
"What in the world are you doing here? You should be in Balamb, keeping the SeeDs there in line!" Caraway was nearly spitting in Odine's face by this point, "The SeeDs of Galbadia AND Balamb have escaped, and the Trabians don't have a clue where that miscreant Almasy got off to, nor do they know where my daughter is! What do you have to say about all this?"  
  
"That upstart," Odine muttered distractedly, "He haz a rather intriguing rapport vit ze Guardians. He used their strength somehow; to bring back ze SeeDs ve had shot down here, in this very entranceway. I wonder... I wonder if I could forcibly draw the Guardians from zose SeeDs anyway. I wonder if I could perhaps use him as an experiment."  
  
"I don't care what experiments you're dreaming up now, you old bag of frills and ribbons," Caraway exploded, "I want to know where they all are!"  
  
Odine seemed to snap back into reality, "Zat is a good question. Vere are zey, do you know?"  
  
~~  
  
"The blasted fool is just locking them away in trinkets," Max muttered under his breath as he glared at the map in front of him, "He's not even using them to augment his strength. All he ever wanted them for was the prestige."  
  
"Fine, Max. Rant, but don't forget to point us to where you think Rinoa's body may be," Kiros drawled as the auburn-haired man kept muttering under his breath as he tried to locate said building.  
  
"This is the most I've ever heard him talk," Laguna seemed mildly surprised, "I almost wondered if he didn't have a strict word quota."  
  
After giving the Estharian President a strange look, Squall looked back to where Max kept absently circling his finger around one point while he stared at a wholly different area of the map. Wondering if Max meant something by it, he asked, "What's under your finger?"  
  
Max looked down, and blinked, "Nothing that I know of," And went back to staring at the rest of the map. After a few minutes, his finger went back to the center of where he'd been circling before, and stayed, until Squall figured that either Max was trying to tell him without the old men knowing, that he didn't realize he was pointing to that spot, or that Max was looking at the wrong map.  
  
"Could you perhaps be looking at a map of our time, when you should be looking at one from yours?" Quistis summed up what Squall had decided must be true, as she took Max's finger from that spot on the map again, and made him look at it closely, "Now there is nothing but ocean according to the map, but as we learned in the Deep Sea Research Center, that's not always true."  
  
Max blinked, and then stared at that point of the map, trying to think if that area would have land at any point in the future that Aura might find a use for. It was near a fairly northernmost point in one of the Centran peninsulas, perhaps... "It's a lead at least. I don't remember ever seeing anything there, but then again, I wasn't in the best of shape when she made me come here anyway, so that might not be saying much," he shrugged, "I suppose the least we can do is investigate."  
  
~  
  
It feels like it might finally be getting close to over. Not like many people are even paying attention anymore. Heh. My fault, I fried my brains because of classes. Ah well. Maybe I'll get this done before the semester's over. 


	26. Little Old Lady

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.  
  
To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.  
  
The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...  
~  
  
Chapter 26  
  
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Laguna squinted his eyes so that they were only just barely open, the sun setting in his view would otherwise have painfully blinded him with afterimages.  
  
"Yes, we're as sure as we can get without actually going," Squall rolled his eyes at the suddenly overprotective Estharian President, "Just why are you suddenly so solicitous?"  
  
Laguna chuckled, "Well, we did just get the Gardens rebuilt and refurbished, and Esthar Garden is only just completed, I suppose I don't want to lose any of the instructors. Well, not any more than we already have lost."  
  
"Then shut up and let us go," Max snapped, the apparent temporary truce evidently over, "The more time we waste reassuring you we know where we're going when we don't the more time it will take for us to find where we're looking, and the more likely we are to lose Doomtrain's assistance, as well as Eric's, which will decrease our chances."  
  
Laguna looked at Max strangely, "I definitely don't remember you talking so much when you were younger."  
  
"Of course not," Max snorted, "I'd had damage done to my throat. It hurt too much to talk, so why bother?" He then stalked off as Laguna processed the new information that really wasn't new, and Squall quietly turned to follow to Ragnarok, where all of the others were waiting.  
  
~~  
  
"Sir, we think we may have pinpointed their location," the soldier in front of Caraway was nearly visibly quaking in his boots, they'd all heard what had happened to the last division of messengers, and weren't eager to learn if the same would happen to them should their information prove incorrect.  
  
"Well, spit it out," Caraway growled, turning his chair to face the soldier that had just entered the room.  
  
"We found an energy signature that resembled that of the Ragnarok," the soldier began, "and it seems to be heading North from what may be the Esthar airport, but when we project the possible path if they do not veer, there is nothing in the path that they couldn't reach sooner by going South, sir."  
  
"How is this pinpointing their location?" Caraway drawled at the soldier.  
  
The messenger coughed nervously, "Well sir, we can't pinpoint there they will go to, but we at least know where they came from. And we think that there is a slight possibility they could veer off to go to the Trabian Garden, or perhaps to the village of the Shumi, or even perhaps to one of the Chocobo forests in the area. We just aren't sure why they would go to any of those places, sir."  
  
Caraway thought quietly for a moment, "Send troops to the Garden, to the entrance to the Shumi village, and to the known Chocobo forests, but also keep and eye on the areas that might be in the straight trajectory, and try to match it or catch them," Caraway turned his chair back around  
  
The messenger relaxed slightly as he took that for a dismissal, leaving the room as quickly as he could to relay the new orders. Maybe he'd be able to keep his job for longer than the three weeks the previous division had held on for. It would certainly be a new record.  
  
~~  
  
Upon reaching the peninsula found on the map Max had been unintentionally pointing at, the Ragnarok was landed, and the whole group disembarked.  
  
"Well, what do you know?" Irvine tipped his hat back slightly, "Never thought it would actually mean something."  
  
Right in front of the shoreline was a small metal structure, almost invisible on ground, and quite invisible during flight.  
  
"Wonder how long that's been there," Maria mused, "Or even better, I wonder how we get in."  
  
Quistis shook her head at the paneling on the door, "It's some strange electronic system; does anyone here know what the code to it might be? Or even how to activate it to try to use the code?"  
  
The Guardian in Zell's body shook her head, "I cannot help, his memories are not surfacing, and I have no technology skills."  
  
Seifer rolled his eyes, "Really, neither does he. All he ever does is whack the machine with his fists."  
  
"I'm game," Maria walked to a panel of the wall, and swung her right fist into it. As she held her fist gently to herself, muttering about how it wasn't fair that Zell could make it look so easy, a panel fell open from the shockwave.  
  
"Um..." Seifer chuckled, "So maybe it's not such a bad idea after all."  
  
"Its not like hitting things always works," Squall rolled his eyes as he studied the panel, "But we have to give Zell credit, as a last resort, it truly does work."  
  
After looking for a bit at the panel, they found themselves just as stumped as before, "Pity we can't try that trick again," Seifer growled at the panel, "But there's too much fragile stuff that would get fried from the impact."  
  
"Not to mention it would fry your skin," Xia sat on the ground near the panel, leaning against a wall, "And it would probably also alert whoever is inside that someone is trying to get in without proper clearance."  
  
"She was always using this weird, overly chipper song as her passcode, if she wasn't supposed to use words," Max tapped his shoe on the ground, "I hated it, so I never bothered to learn or memorize it. Pity."  
  
"Great," Seifer rolled his eyes, "That does a lot of good, helps us so much, so why again did we bring you?"  
  
Max just glared at him.  
  
"Guys, we don't need to start fighting now," Selphie was turning a slightly greener shade of her usually healthy peach, because by this point, the skin covering Eric's frame actually did rip as he moved, and the sound of the flesh shredding and the scent of the blood- or whatever it was- slipping down his skin was decidedly grossing her out, "We don't really have the time for Max and Seifer to rip each other new airholes. Eric's getting more and more disgusting to look at with each passing second, no offense."  
  
"None taken" Eric's voice whistled through the holes that had developed along his throat and mouth as he spoke, "Even I am finding this unbearable."  
  
Max shifted his glare from Seifer to the metal panel and after a bit, in a slight fit of anger, he stepped in front of it and started what appeared to be randomly hitting buttons and tweaking knobs.  
  
"What are you doing?!" Irvine yelped at him, just as he stopped.  
  
"It wasn't as random as it looked," Max muttered, "I've seen her use a panel like that before. The passcode was valid as long as you hit every button once only, and tweaked each switch, pulled each lever, and pulled every cord only once as well, but you had to get all of them, and do so in a certain amount of time, and couldn't pull from the same row or column twice in a row."  
  
"You're kidding," Maria was flabbergasted, "That's almost pathetically simple, yet unbelievably difficult at the same time!"  
  
Max shrugged, "If it makes it any better, I taught her that trick, though it doesn't seem to have worked in this case."  
  
Just as the others were about to agree that it had not worked, one of the metal walls lifted from the ground to disappear into the ceiling, opening a path into the small structure.  
  
"Or you spoke too soon," Seifer joked, "Wonder why there was such a lag?"  
  
"Who are you people, and what are you doing here?" An oldish woman stood in the door, slightly frightened, yet determined to have answers, "Are you here to take back the young lady?" She spotted Max, "Oh, there you are! Miss Aura warned me you might be on your way soon," She disappeared into the building, "Follow me, she had a gift for you."  
  
"I'm not entirely sure I want to," Max muttered, though he was following, "The last gift she gave me hurt entirely too much."  
  
~  
  
I can't help but think the story's dead/dying/whatever, but I still have to get this done, or I'll feel really bad about not finishing it. 


	27. Interruption of Time, the sixth

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.

To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.

The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...

Chapter 27

Upon reaching her destination, Aura stopped, and whirled around. She glared at Max, who was still hobbling into the room, and then stalked up to him. She grabbed his right arm and yanked him further into the room at her pace, which more or less knocked him off his feet. When Aura reached her destination in the room, she dropped his arm and began fiddling with the straps and belts on the table.

While she did this, Max tried desperately to assess his arm for additional damage, pointless as it might have been. He also tried to figure out how in the world a girl of her build, trained or otherwise, could drag an unwilling body behind her so effortlessly. Then he remembered the crystal around her neck and chalked it up to the power in it giving her strength in at least partial exchange for stealing her sanity.

After a little bit, Aura pronounced her machine prepared, and turned to Max. Grinning she asked, "Well?"

"Well, what?" Max was again, puzzled, he'd never seen the room before, nor the machine, and had no idea what she wanted.

"I will need you to connect me to the machine, and then to connect yourself. So we can use your power to send me back."

"I'm not Ellone, Aura," Max winced as her glare darkened.

"I know that," Aura sat on the table/bed set up with the most belts and clips, "I just figured that with this machine modeled after her power, and yours, which is very similar, I should be able to go back in time and see what's going on. At the very least. I might even be able to DO something, if I'm lucky."

"Ellone's power required knowing the person," Max muttered, "and I had never heard of Odine managing to make the machine do any better."

"That's what your power is supposed to do," Aura grinned, "Now belt us in and get to work!"

Her bones ached blessed much in the winter, as mild as they were in Winhill. Thus it was with great complaint, and very slow movement, that Mrs. Nedar moved from her room, to her kitchen to make herself some tea. Her progress was steady though, and while she moved, even as she grumbled, she enjoyed the smell of the flowers throughout her house. That meant her daughter had been to visit already, and had perhaps even begun cooking, so that Mrs. Nedar wouldn't have to just have tea for the morning. Ever since Mr. Nedar had passed away, Mrs. Nedar- Patsy to her friends, had been thinking of selling the house, or moving somewhere smaller, somewhere she wouldn't have to climb up and down the stairs to get anywhere, and giving the house to her daughter. Poor girl was so alone, she'd left Winhill while growing up, and had visited Galbadia's capital, Deling City. What she saw there, she never said much about, but she didn't waste any time returning. Mrs. Nedar felt for her poor, lonely daughter, but also saw the event as something young Lena had needed to teach her the blessings of actually growing up.

All the same, when Mrs. Nedar reached her kitchen, it was with great anticipation for the possibility of scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and orange juice fresh squeezed waiting for her on the table. To her surprise, her daughter was collapsed on the kitchen table itself, face-first into those same hash browns Mrs. Nedar was so looking forward to. Screaming, Mrs. Nedar attempted to pull her daughter out of the finely chopped, fried potatoes, and hoped her daughter was all right, even as she worried for her own heart, and her breakfast.

Several tries with the time jumping machine finally told Aura that her plans weren't working as she had hoped. For one thing, she kept taking on the body of some woman from a tiny little town in the Galbadian-controlled lands that no longer existed to her knowledge. For another, she was only able to inhabit the woman's body long enough to open her eyes to the world around her, and pass back out.

Unstrapping herself, Aura snapped, "Are you trying to sabotage my plans or are you that incompetent?" She stalked to her fellow occupant of the room, and glared into the dark-almost-black blue eyes that screamed in pain and exhaustion.

"I have told you repeatedly now, and while you grew up, that my powers aren't fine-tuned enough for things like this. The only one I can send with any real control is me," Max shuddered at the expression on Aura's face and tried to slip out of the bindings he'd become tangled in.

"Then we'll just have to send you, so you can be my link, won't we?" Aura asked with saccharine sweetness.

"It doesn't work like that either," Max sighed, "If I help you, I can send you, to a stranger, though we'll not know who they are. If you do this on your own, you'll be limited to someone you know, and won't be able to change a thing. With me there, I won't come back, and you'll be limited in that fashion for the rest of the time you want to attempt this madness."

Upon closing his mouth on those words, Max realized he never should have said the last part, as Aura swung out at him again, catching his now recently battered throat once more. Coughing and choking, he could do nothing as she began to fiddle with dials, readings and entered codes into the computer system.

"It's going to be okay," Aura smirked, "I have almost finished making the additions to the format of the machine, so that it better suits my needs. So when I get that done, I can send you backward, and still be able to do what I want to."

"You're tinkering with a machine that's been in existence for at least three hundred years," Max winced some more, curled in on himself, and resigned himself, "Don't blame me when it blows up, sends the wrong person, place, or thing, to just fails to work."

"Don't worry, I will," Aura rolled her eyes.

Another restart. Hopefully, this will be the last push. And perhaps, about now, the two timelines will begin tailing into one another. 


	28. Returning Rinoa

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.

To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.

The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...

Chapter 28

Following the woman through the hall, short as it was, Max didn't bother to look around at the walls. Unlike another place he'd had to stay, the walls told no stories. Thus, he concentrated on where the woman was walking, and tried not to visibly dread whatever "gift" Aura might have seen fit to give him. He still had scarring from the last two.

"So, what gift is she talking about?" Quistis surprised Max by having followed him through the hall. As he looked behind him, Max realized that Irvine had followed as well, the others guarding the door from the outside, and just inside instead.

Not far in, the woman stopped. Not that she had far to go, as the building consisted of an entryway, a hall, and one room connected. Smiling gently, the woman gestured at the raven-haired female laying on one of two cots in the room, "While she's not the expressed gift I was told to give you, you might as well take her too. Milady's done with her."

"Please, don't call her milady," Max groaned, "I've been hoping that my greatest fear concerning this situation isn't going to happen, but with you giving her that title, my hopes are fading."

"And that fear would be?" Irvine had crouched down next to the dark haired woman and had patted her on the shoulder lightly, with no response, "Any ideas as to how to wake her?"

"A glass of water should do it," the older woman suggested as she turned from reaching under the bed that was currently unoccupied. As she straightened, the box in her hand was revealed, "This is for you, milady left a note for me, saying it was time for her to cease playing in the past, and she was going to move on to claim her future."

Taking the box from her, Max felt his stomach sink. The message sounded exactly as his fears indicated. As he opened it, Max tried to figure out how the crystal could have found it's way out of the rock it had lodged into before the gunshot Aura had mentioned. It seemed to him that would be the best way for Aura to communicate her intentions, but when he opened the box, he was surprised. It was a sorceress bangle, with a note.

'I'm sure you figured I'd use the crystal as my signal. But of course, if I dug it out of its rocky hiding place NOW, I'd not be able to find it in the future. You've pointed out many times to me that while I can use the machine to send my thoughts back, or send you in your entirety, manipulating your powers, I can't send anything physical other than you. Of course, I had to count on you finding it when I sent you, after all, you WERE the one to wind up with it in the first place, so it could be used like this. By the by, how are you enjoying your life, and friends? Won't it really bother you to lose them?'

Puzzled, Max read and reread it, looking for some clue or another as to how he'd lose the friends he was only just naming as such. Having been told repeatedly that he'd lose them, he'd been hesitant to call anyone friend, so he'd pushed away everyone he'd known in Esthar before the actions of Adel and Laguna had caused it to be closed off. He'd also pushed away everyone in the Gardens who'd met him and tried to be friendly, figuring from the drawings on the walls in the Timeless Castle, that he'd be locked away by something, and not wanting to take the chance that that was how he'd lose his friends. After waking again, he'd decided that he'd already lost enough and wasn't going to lose any more, so he'd slowly allowed himself to call his fellow instructors ad Esthar Garden friends. He'd even unintentionally gotten closer than just friendship with some of them, though he'd never admit that out loud. After all, it wasn't a good time to tell Ariadne that he'd adopted her as a sister, right after she would lose Eric.

Quistis, having found a spigot and glass, and subsequently splashed the retrieved glass of water onto the face of the slumbering woman, was explaining to the newly awoken woman the events of the past few weeks.

"You're serious," Rinoa sputtered, "I was possessed by ANOTHER sorceress? She pretended I was an idiot, and walked me into your Garden, and- " Rendered speechless with anger, Rinoa just muttered darkly, "As if I'd care if there was a same sex couple teaching at a school, as long as they didn't base students' grades on it!"

"Of all things to be ticked about," Irvine chuckled, "You picked the funniest one."

"Well," Rinoa looked crossly at him. Then she continued, "I doubt the sorceress bothered to look too deep into my actual thoughts on things, or she'd have known I would be one of the first ones cheering Squally on in finding a new love; male or female, just because the poor guy's so lonely!"

Quistis blinked, "You'd been under her control that long?"

Rinoa snorted, "What you thought I really was that stupid and close-minded? Shows how much any of you really know me!" she paused, "Though I suppose that's my own fault, for disappearing so quickly after me and Squall fizzled."

Irvine rolled his eyes, "Fizzled? That's the word you're gonna use?"

"Yes," Rinoa nodded, "Haven't you ever been or seen a situation where one person was rescued by another?" she pointed at his chest, "and the rescued develops a crush on the rescuer? After a while, the rescued will come to terms with the reality of the rescuer, and will lose the 'feelings' they thought they had, unless they were real, and apparently, they weren't real for me and Squally."

Finally snapping out of the stupor caused by the letter, Max heard the tail end of the conversation and blinked a few times, "Okay, I didn't need to know that. Uhm. This letter tells me we have a problem we weren't expecting. I have no idea how long Aura was walking around in Rinoa's skin, but it seems like Aura's done using others to observe. She said she's going to take action to create her future now," holding out the letter, Max winced. The name used to sign it was one painfully familiar to everyone in the room, "I think she's given up her name by birth, and has decided to use one no one ever wanted to hear again."

Landing not far from the brightly red Ragnarok on the coastline, Caraway's troops slipped out of their craft and lined up in regular formation. They stood at attention and waited orders. When the general himself stepped in front of them, some of the soldiers felt beads of sweat drip down their backs. As the silenced stretched, some of them began to wonder what was going on in their commanding officer's head. If anything was, that is.

Barking out commands to the soldiers, Caraway finally set them into motion. Sending some to surround the small structure between their craft and the Ragnarok, Caraway hoped to surround the SeeDs inside. He also sent some to confiscate and tie down the flight-capable craft itself. Finally, when his first and second units were in place, Caraway marched the third group to the building, heading for the front door for a visit.

"Bad news, more bad news, and worse than bad news," Seifer muttered to himself, "We've got Caraway landing out here, sending troops to surround, troops to the Ragnarok, and now he's coming to the front door to knock it down."

Maria shrugged, "We knew we could only stay so many steps ahead of him for so long. What else is there to expect?"

"I dunno, maybe a moment's break?" Seifer groused.

Walking out of the small building, Squall, Quistis, Max, Rinoa, Irvine, Xia, and a strange, older woman were greeted by worried faces, and a rather large troop of Galbadian soldiers.

"Surrender the Guardians, my daughter, and your other prisoner," Caraway called out, while motioning his soldiers to draw and aim, "I don't want any innocents injured."

"Innocents?" Seifer sputtered, "You've gotta be kidding me! You tried to send five SeeDs on a dead-end mission to turn it into a literal dead-end job, and you have the sheer-"

"Father!" Rinoa stepped forward and glared, "I don't know what kind of idiocy you're up to now, but if you think I'm coming home to toe whatever line you dream up, you can keep dreaming!"

Shocked by his daughter's renewed anger towards him, since he'd enjoyed her docility for the last month or so, Caraway blinked. Shaking his head, he modified his earlier statement, "Fine. Then send the only actual hostage, and release the Guardians to me, and we'll have done with it."

Xia glared at the soldiers, at Caraway, and crossed her arms, "So you're not even going to offer us an ultimatum? It's just going to be, do this and die?"

"I have no need of any of you in the future I've envisioned," Caraway flapped a hand in the air dismissively.

Suspicious, Max squinted at the general, and muttered a quick spell under his breath. Those close enough might have just barely heard an Esuna, or a Scan, but couldn't be sure either way.

Flinching as a cold chill settled over him, Caraway paused. Then he blinked. Finally he shook himself all over as a dog does immediately after getting out of the bath. Blinking some more, Caraway asked, "What in blazes are we doing here, and where in the scorching sands of Esthar are we?"

While all of his soldiers tried not to fall on their faces, those facing Caraway down, blinked profusely, muttered, or swore the air blue. Finally relaxing, Max sighed, "General, have you ever met a woman by the name of Aura?"

"Why yes," the General rubbed his chin, "In fact, I believe that's the name of the lady with you that isn't a SeeD or any such thing. She's a citizen of Galbadia through Winhill, and visited me a few months ago, introducing herself. She told me that she was doing research, but never explained it beyond that."

"I'm afraid you have her mistaken for someone else," Max rubbed his elbow, "This lady, while a native of Winhill, is not named Aura. But Aura did visit you, that much I'm sure of. Now."

The woman stepped forward and explained, "I also met this woman, Aura. Only I never saw a physical form. She always showed up in my home in Winhill, speaking to me as a ghost would. After a time, I figured that was what she was. I also came to realize that she might have the power to possess people, as at times, when I had a conversation with her, I would find myself waking in places I'd never been before. Finally, she showed up one last time, and when I woke, I was here, with a note telling me to stay, and wait for the young woman with black hair that would come. It was in my own handwriting."

"What would that accomplish?" Squall looked at Max, "Why would she take a woman from Winhill, meet Caraway, and then take her to here?"

"Sir?" the soldiers took a chance, "Do we stand down now or do we still aim to kill and try to take the Guardians?"

Shocked, Caraway looked as though he was going to have a heart attack, "What in the world?! Stand down! STAND DOWN!!" yelling so that all of the soldiers in the area could hear, he informed them of their orders changing. Most would return to their craft and would return to Galbadia. The rest would act as an escort to the SeeD and himself as they puzzled this problem out.

"Well?" Rinoa remembered Squall's question, and prompted Max to answer.

Sighing deeply and hoping the world would open up and swallow him, Max replied, "I don't suppose you'll let me finish puzzling this out for myself before demanding an answer, will you?" At their glares, he began, "I'll start as close to the beginning as I can. Aura was a student at Esthar Garden. A descendant of some of you, she was held to high standards. Unfortunately, her Headmaster hated her. I never did figure out why, she shot me before I could do research, but that comes later," he rubbed at the scarred over shoulder, "She was approaching her nineteenth birthday, with seven attempts at graduating, all ending in abysmal failures. It seemed as though the people in charge saw her name and threw the folder away each time, without even giving her a chance. At least, after the first three tries."

"She had as many tries as I did," Seifer whistled.

"Wonder if she was anything like you," Quistis muttered.

"Actually, she was almost a female Seifer, minus the gunblade and the Disciplinary Committee," Max smiled sadly, "Right after her final attempt, I noticed she had a crystal around her neck. It was the one used to seal the Sorceress powers, I later found. She'd found it right outside the castle named for Ultimecia, and had wandered around in the castle while she was at it. She knew the history of how SeeD defeated Ultimecia, how SeeD sealed Sorcery away and freed the Guardians, and moreover, I think she knew that Caraway was going to have a case of temporary insanity that would result in the death of one of the Esthar Garden instructors."

Caraway paled, "One of you lot is dead? I can't tell which, you're all standing-" choking as he finally caught a good look at Eric, Caraway looked back at Max, "How is he doing that? Or are one of you controlling him?"

Crackling ice sounded in his ears, as Shive spoke through Zell, "In a manner of speaking. Truthfully, Doomtrain is but controlling the speed of decay caused by those bullets that kill zombies you had Odine create."

"I do believe that I will be resigning from the military when this is all ironed out," Caraway muttered to himself, "It should be about the only way to begin to apologize for my actions, though I don't seem to remember them well."

"That you remember them at all is reason enough to discharge yourself from Galbadian service," Max glared, "Anyway, back to Aura. The problem is, the crystal drives mad all who wear it, except a select few. I suspect that Rinoa, Ultimecia, and I were the only ones on the list that would be affected by this generation of events. I think Ultimecia wouldn't have gone mad because she already was. Rinoa wore it before the powers were contained, so she should have been safe. Me, I'm the oddball in the equation, but that's not the point. The point is that Aura wore the stone, and it drove her mad. She thought about releasing the power, and about meddling with events in the past, because of it."

"So there's every chance that by meddling with events, she actually ironed those events into happening," Squall guessed, "Including the existence of Utimecia herself."

"Forget cementing her existence," Siefer snorted, "I think the little madcap IS Ultimecia!"

"Wouldn't you have known her then?" Maria pointed out, "You were, or are, her knight."

"Not if she hadn't inherited the power yet," Seifer grumbled, "She wasn't a sorceress yet when she took over Rinoa."

"Then how'd she do it?" Caraway chanced butting in.

"Odine has or is building a machine that mimics Ellone's powers of sending people into the past to experience it. Of course, with that in mind, it had the same limitations," Max shrugged.

"She could only visit people she knew?" Selphie guessed.

"That, and she couldn't actually affect the past," Max looked at the ground, as though it had the answers for what he had to say next, "So she tried to get around that, by using the gift of another. She knew of someone who could send themselves into the past, and could actually affect it, to a degree. Of course, he didn't want to, but she HAD shot him in the right shoulder, and socked him in the throat a few times, so it wasn't like he could actually keep her from using the machine to activate his curse."

As it dawned on them, Max started pacing, "I showed up about a year before the uprising in Esthar that ended Adel's reign. I got out just before the borders of the city were closed, and began wandering the other continents of the world. I took advantage of the fact that I look under nineteen and joined Garden. Or I should say, I joined it again. Since I refused to select a specialized weapon, I was never actually allowed to graduate, but since my first stint as a SeeD cadet had ended with me as a swordsman, I didn't care much. Then on a whim, I disappeared. I thought I'd terminated my education at Garden fully, and would have no pursuers," he stopped, "That's when the results of her first attempts at bridging the past took effect. She sent herself back with the machine, to me, because she knew I'd be there. She walked me into the castle, and put me into place so that Ultimecia could make use of me. You should know the rest."

"So how is it you have this power?" Selphie felt brave and hopeful enough to ask.

"Tch," Max shook his head, "I was born with it? I don't know much about how I came into being. For all I know, I'm going to be sent forward into the future again, with my memory wiped clean, to start this cycle all over again!"

I'm feeling about two or three more chapters out of this. We'll see. 


	29. Bent rules, Broken lives

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.

To warn you, this is starting to get gory, or at least getting really violent.

The Rinoa bashing is revving into overdrive. I promise it's unintentional. Or at least, it started that way...

Chapter 29

"So, you're saying that when she found you wandering around, after you left Garden behind," Rinoa puzzled, "that she took you over and dragged you to that dreary castle?"

"No, dear," the older woman, who'd introduced herself as Lena interrupted, "She possessed me for that event. In the back of my mind, where I was, I was not entirely sure my body would survive the trek, but apparently she was able to make me quite strong enough to survive both directions."

"So," Xia took her turn at fitting a piece in, "how did Ultimecia get her hands on you when that castle wasn't present in this time until Time Compression started?"

"Oh it has been present throughout time," Max muttered, "It just takes a special touch to reach it. Or it did, until Time Compression. As far as it goes, when Aura, with Lena's physical form, frog-marched me there, I was more than a little puzzled. Apparently enough of Aura's mind had been leant over to Ultimecia that Aura found it quite easy to slip past whatever wards and enchantments made it invisible and intangible."

"If that's what they did," Irvine pointed out, "The place could have just been on an alternate plane of existence, like the Guardians are, until Time Compression, and your girl was able to shift you through using the crystal."

Max winced at the phrase describing the woman he'd once thought of as a sister or a daughter, "It's a possibility. It would also explain a few things about the Guardians finding it difficult to reach. I'd guess that if it's on a different plane from us, it's also on a different plane from them, so they had to hop through two barriers to get there."

"Fine," Caraway was paler than paper, "But what do we do with the four Guardian possessed and the dead walking?"

"I honestly have no idea," Max bit his lip, "The four are mostly healed, and are just in a form of stasis. More benevolently intended but much like the one I was apparently in for a year or so. Eric, though, when Doomtrain lets him go, will revert to so much rotted flesh, we might as well dig a grave and have her walk him into it for when she lets go."

"That won't be much longer," whistling wind passed their ears as Lynne's mouth moved, issuing the words of Pandemona to all around, "Doomtrain's strength is nearly gone."

"The period of time for the students' break has almost passed too," Selphie pointed out, "And we'll have to report back to the school. We'll also have to report Eric's... death. Oh, and we'll have to find a way to break it to his daughter."

Caraway flinched, "Leave that last to me, it's the least I can do considering it was... indirectly my fault, but done at my hands all the same."

Snorting, Max looked away from the rest of the group, at the wall of the meeting room in the Ragnarok they were using. Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his face.

"Yes, I know, about time," Caraway seemed to read Max's mind, "Too little too late, either of those ring a bell Mister Tyler? I have been a soldier for long enough to know that particular responsibility. How will the girl's mother take it?"

"Uh, yeah, about that," Maria prevaricated, "Her mother's been dead since the Galbadia and Balamb Gardens clashed."

It was Seifer's turn to wince, but Caraway nodded, "So the girl is now an orphan in entirety? Does that mean she'll become a student of Garden?"

"It's her choice," Irvine drawled, "If she wants to, she can try as early as nine."

"Unless she decides to attend Esthar," muttered Max, "Would someone tell me again how we wound up with a student population of five to eight-year-olds?"

"Because Laguna either doesn't understand the rule that was set in place about the age restriction, or he doesn't care," Squall shook his head, "But how do we deal with the Aura/Ultimecia problem and Eric's decomposition?"

"If she decided to stop playing in the past," Rinoa blinked, "Wouldn't that mean we've got nothing more to worry about with her?"

"Maybe," Selphie blinked, "But can we know that for sure?"

"You certainly won't be fighting Ultimecia," Lena suggested, "Because she never attacked this time outside of the incident you all have already dealt with. Aura told me that much."

"So, does that mean that it's over?" Quistis pondered, "We go home, go back to teaching too young children, bury and mourn Eric? What do we do next?"

"No, there is something more," Max turned back to the group, "Her favorite taunt to me was that I would lose all I held dear again, in this time. I just have to figure out what she means, and how she'll go about doing that."

"Are you sure SHE'S going to be the one to do that?" Irvine snorted, "After all, you're a SeeD now, and you could be killed by anything," pointing at Eric's slowly rotting form, "proof walking. She might not have to do anything."

"How's that going to lose him those he cares about," Rinoa asked, "Wouldn't that mean we lost him?"

"So something's going to happen that kills the rest of us," Selphie realized.

"Who says you lot are the ones I give a hoot about?" Max got up, stalked off, and really didn't convince anyone he meant what he said.

Finding a wall to lean against, Max slumped to the ground. Looking around, he rolled his eyes. He'd walked around, mentally berating himself for giving his emotional state away so eloquently, "Maybe I can push them away, solve the problem that way," he muttered to himself. Then he sighed and rested his head against the wall, which happened to be below the catwalk leading to the cockpit of the Ragnarok. He stared for a bit through the grating of the catwalk, and had to suppress a snicker as it began to ice over, signaling Shiva's approach on it, through Zell's body. Without even hesitating, she caused Zell to jump off the catwalk to just beyond where Max sat.

"You know trying to push them away won't work," the voice seemed to have icicles crashing through the words, "It only worked in your previous efforts because you did so from the beginning. This time, you let them grow on you, and you grew on them."

"Just like fungus," Max smarted off.

Sighing, "You know it's not like that," the sound of walking through snow drifts issued from Zell and his clothes as Shiva crouched, "Have you ever thought perhaps that not only humans, but Guardians might be included in this loss of those held dear?"

Horrified, Max stared through Zell's eyes to the icy ones of Shiva, "You're serious. Blast! And I never thought of that one," sighing deeply, "I don't want to believe it's possible, but since you all aren't usually on this plane anymore, it is, isn't it?"

Zell's head nodded affirmation, "We wish we could take you with us to our homes when we retreat from the minds of the children. Unfortunately, while you and your powers are similar, you are NOT a member of our people, and would likely fare as well there as we do here."

"How'd you get to be the one to find me?" Max tried changing the subject.

"I never gave the others the chance," Shiva's smile translated well on the blonde's features, "You and those I find favorable, often think along similar lines. Perhaps you should trust in that more."

"What, and wind up closer to them when I have to let go?" Max winced, "I was adopted by the families of their descendants. I lost those families when Aura used that machine and my power to send me here. I adopted Aura, and I lost that when she got the crystal and let it warp her. All I have to do now is be truly adopted by these people, and find myself cast elsewhere, and I'll finish the path to madness I think I'm already halfway down!"

"If you do actually go mad," Shiva cocked her head sideways, "at least then you might dwell in a world where you've never lost."

"That's reassuring, Shiva, really," Max's sarcasm was thick enough to cut.

"Or you could trust in your own strength of mind and body," Squall spoke from the other side, causing Max to practically jump back into a standing position, "And just let it be as it will. Live with what time deals you," he shrugged, "It's what the rest of us are doing."

Max stared at Squall for a minute, then returned to looking Shiva in the eye. Finally his eyes sunk to the ground, as he tried to put his thoughts into words. Taking a deep breath, he asked, "Do you have any idea how many families I've already had and lost?"

Still trying to figure out how this is going to end, but it doesn't seem like it will be happy. 


	30. Reminders of what is lost

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.

Chapter 30

"Oh," Squall responded, "I've a fair idea, I followed Shiva. I don't wear the boots I do for no reason after all."

Max looked to the ground, shaking his head, "Just my luck." Shrugging, Max stood up and leaned against the wall, "This will seem like a strange reference, but you do remember reading my file, right?"

Squall nodded, "Is there are particular reason you are telling just Shiva and myself?"

Max smirked, "Zell's in there, he's hearing, he'll tell everyone else."

Shiva's laughter crinkled through the air, "He's mildly offended at that, he's not half the gossip that certain others are."

"Maybe not," Max conceded, "but, he's more or less been given permission to blab, and we all know how well he keeps secrets under pressure."

Squall rolled his eyes, "He doesn't."

Shiva grinned through Zell's face, and it seemed like both of them were taking part in the expression, "What was that about your file?"

Nodding, Max continued, "I've been asked about my family so many times it isn't even funny. Back in Aura's time, I'd adopted her family, both sides, and other families of the descendants. Even then they asked who my birth family was. The best answer I'd give is the one that they could get out of me right after Esthar was sealed."

"Something about a brother?" Squall supplied, having had enough time to search through his mental files for the information.

"Yeah," Max rubbed the back of his neck, "The place I first called home makes up the fuzziest of memories in my mind. Like the Guardians fuzzing your minds. I think I didn't have the ability to warp time then. Upon my arrival here, somehow, I developed it, and paid in exchange the majority of my memories. The one thing I do remember clearly was the face of someone calling me brother. His hair was very pale, and his face was covered in blood. I get the feeling he was dying."

"How pale was his hair?" Squall seemed to be thinking a hole into the ground he was staring at.

"It doesn't make any sense here, but it was white," Max shrugged, "I'd say as white as a cloud, but there was another color in it, a little purple too, I think. But not enough to turn it a pale purple, just enough to show through the white."

Shaking his head, Squall muttered, "The white sounds like Fuujin, but the purple is right on out of the question. She remembers her family, and they all had white to silver hair."

Max shrugged again, "I don't even remember a name, so it's not like I'm going to argue that fact. Though, sometimes, I think I can remember another person. A blonde, younger, and he's still got the look of innocence about him, even though everything else about him tells you he's had to kill before."

"That sounds like Zell," Shiva smirked, "was this one hyperactive?"

"No," Max shook his head, "At least, not to my knowledge. But, like I said, this is all fuzzy."

"Why exactly is it," Shiva seemed to be asking a question from Zell, "That you and President Loire don't get along?"

"When he fought Adel, and got her sealed away," Max shifted his weight from one foot to the other, "he and his two friends, Kiros and Ward were hailed as heroes, and wasted no time in freeing those she'd imprisoned. In fact, they blindly freed all of the people who'd been incarcerated, and only later realized that some had been there because they were actually criminals. One of them had been convicted of murdering a house full of people, and the criminal decided to come after the sole witness who could get him put back."

"You?" Squall guessed.

Nodding, Max continued, "Thus, I'm not a fan of the idiot. As far as I can tell, most of the rest of his decisions have been like that. Jump in, and see if he can swim his way back out."

"What are we going to do about Eric?" Squall sighed as he asked.

With a sad smile, Max shook his head, "I'm not entirely sure. Technically, the problems have been solved. Rinoa's not on a rampage anymore, Caraway's no longer trying to take over the world, and we'll never change Odine, so there's no point in messing with him. The best we can do is find Eric's parents and ask them where they want to bury him."

The sound of footsteps preceding her voice "Hopefully," Quistis stared at Max reproachfully, "you'll have more tact than that when telling them."

"Hopefully, Caraway will do his job, and will tell them for us," Max stared back, "if he doesn't, then yes, I'll make sure they're sitting before we tell them that Caraway had him sent on a mission that was meant to kill him."

Looking up at the walkway, Shiva smirked, "How many of you are there, standing at the door, listening in?"

Unabashedly, Selphie grinned through the doorway, "Hey, hearing about Maxie's family is much more entertaining than watching poor Eric."

As Max winced at the nickname, Quistis reached the bottom of the stairs leading from the cockpit to the elevator panel leading to a storage area of the Ragnarok, "We can help you research your family you know."

"If there's anything to research," Seifer walked through the doorway, stared at the melting ice, and shook his head as he jumped to sit on the railing instead, "After all, the info we've got all points to him being from another time at the least. Another dimension at the worst. Like he said, he could find himself shunted to another time without warning. For all we'd know, he'd be popped off to another dimension too."

Groaning, Max scratched at his nose, "Must you remind me? I'm trying to forget all the ways this temporal disturbance ability I've been cursed with could malfunction."

"Wait, wait, wait," Selphie waved her hands wildly, "You said malfunction? That means you have no control over it?"

"Little to none," Max confirmed, "the best I've ever been able to do with it is slow time for others. An unintentional side effect of that seems to be my own lack of aging."

"So you really could keep on living," Seifer drawled, "long after we've all died of old age."

"I keep asking you all to not remind me of these things. I really am trying to forget it. It's what more or less happened when I came to this time. I lived among a family, until they started noticing that I still looked as old as I did when they first found me. Not a great way to keep people around you."

"So why are you letting us find out?" Selphie chirped.

"Who said anything about let?" Max snorted, "You've all figured this stuff out on your own, and I'm not that fast a thinker to come up with something completely off the cuff to dissuade you of it."

"Or you're leading us down a path of your choosing so we don't even fathom the realities you're hiding from us," Squall stared straight at Max, with the iciest glare he could pull off.

Feeling like his toes were freezing, Max smirked, "Well, there's that possibility too, but you'd just have to trust me to be telling you the truth, wouldn't you?"

"So this is how you would separate yourself, to prevent the pain of loss?" Shiva seemed disappointed, "Convincing them that you lie when you speak truly?"

"How do you know I haven't been-"

Diablos interrupted, harrumphing, "Because I can taste a lie, and you have no skill with telling them in the first place. You've not spoken a lie since you said your memories of before this world were fuzzy."

"Erk," Max paled, "Forgot about that one. Phoo," Max scratched at the back of his head, "You just like shooting down all my options, don't you?"

"Options or no options," Rinoa peeked through the door, "We're running out of time to deal with Eric. Could we please fly to his hometown?"

With a yelp of glee mixed with sorrow, though only she could pull that combination off, Selphie ran for the stairs, calling, "I'm flying! I'm flying! And don't anyone else even think of touching the controls!"

Still trying to figure out how this is going to end, but it doesn't seem like it will be happy. 


	31. I'm a fan of looping time

I'm trying to write the story I had originally intended.  
I don't own any of the Final Fantasy 8 characters, but the newbies are mine.

Chapter 31

Standing in front of a new stone in the cemetery, Ariadne looked at the girl in her arms, with tears in her eyes, "Do you think your grandparents would let me adopt you?"

"It's not us you need to worry about, dear," Eric's mother patted Ariadne on the shoulder, "We've read Eric's letters, he spoke so fondly of you, we can only imagine that you would be the person he'd have chosen to be a second mother to his daughter."

"It's our little granddaughter you need to make sure won't argue the decision," Eric's father sighed, "And the government deciding that a mercenary isn't a stable enough person to take care of her."

Holding tightly to Ariadne's neck and hair, cried, "Daddy was a mersen'ry, why can't Nadne be?"

"The government wouldn't tell her she couldn't be," Maria patted her 'adopted' sister on the back, "just that she couldn't be when she wants to take care of you."

"That's stupid," the little girl scorned the thought, "Daddy and Mommy both were, and nobody told them it was too hard."

"Eh," Lynne piped up, "that's just because she's all alone. If she had others helping her-"

"Who says she'd be alone?" Maria swatted Lynne on the arm, "she'd have all of us at the Garden helping her."

"Not to mention the fact that she's standing down from active duty," Max smirked at the little girl from where he stood behind Ariadne.

"Oh, you weren't supposed to tell her that yet!" Ariadne looked around to glare at him, "It was going to be a surprise. I was going to get his parents' permission to adopt her, then tell her when it went through that she wasn't gonna lose me anytime soon because I'm just a consultant and teacher to mercenaries now!"

"Sorry," not looking in the slightest apologetic, Max was still trying to make the motions to it, "I didn't know. I just thought you'd like to know your request went through. As far as Galbadia, Trabia, Esthar and Balamb Gardens are concerned, you're no longer a SeeD on active duty. Your pay will decrease a bit on the scale of things, but you'll get a commission for your efforts at teaching, so it should just about even out."

Squealing, Ariadne bent, set her burden on the ground to stand on her own two feet and she glomped a rather surprised Max. Ironically, so did little Merinda.

Blushing, "Next time, I'm sending Squall or Kiros to do this," Max patted the young child on the head and Ariadne on the shoulder, "You wouldn't mind letting go sometime soon, would you?"

Now blushing like Max, "Ooops, sorry, forgot, you don't let just anyone touch you."

"Eh," Max shook his head as both females let go, "I knew it was a mistake coming here while there were people still here."

Lynne snorted, "You're gonna have to get over it eventually. You agreed to be a part of no less than two weddings, you're gonna have to participate in the dances involved,"

Maria laughed and interrupted, "Lynne, don't scare him off, Xia would shoot you if she knew you'd scared off one of her groom's men. And the groom has a hard enough time getting along with other guys that they don't need any lost!"

Ariadne grinned, "Not to mention the two walking batteries would both string you up by your toenails if they knew you'd lost them their ring bearer."

"Er," Lynne paled, "They couldn't, it'd lose both weddings another member."

"Let's see," Selphie mused aloud, "Loss of one guest, versus loss of ring bearer and potential comic relief? Hm..."

"I knew it," Max muttered, "This is the last time I let myself get roped into something like this. I don't care if it has been four months, the last time I was here, I still have nightmares from."

"Nightmares?" Irvine drawled, "I thought you'd actually gotten something pleasant out of the whole visit."

"I can't help but think Eric is laughing at all of this," Ariadne smirked, "Somewhere, he's laughing at the fact that even a year after he was buried, Max has almost developed a phobia of his headstone."

"Hey now," Max looked at Ariadne, still a little off-center from the teasing, "I don't have a phobia of his headstone, when I'm the only one here. When others show up too, sure, almost, but by myself, I'm just fine."

"Or when there's only one other person with you," Seifer, who'd just joined the impromptu reunion quipped, "Like, say-"

"I think this conversation is getting older than little pitchers should hear," Eric's mother swept her granddaughter into her arms and trundled the littler girl to the car the family had driven to the final resting place of her son.

"Don't mind us leaving though," Eric's father followed his wife, "We didn't mean to be involved in this SeeD picking session. Go on teasing the poor man. Though I think you'll have to catch him before he takes the vehicle he arrived in with him."

Lynne sputtered, "That's our ride back to Esthar Garden!"

Selphie snorted, "He'd better not be thinking of piloting the Ragnarok! I'm the one who calls uncontested dibs on it!"

"How exactly is it you came back with the rest of them all flustered and annoyed with you again?" Squall smirked as Kiros asked the question both had been itching to pose to the man pretending to sleep on the recliner in the staff lounge.

Muttering under his breath about annoying people who didn't know when to let a person pretend to sleep to avoid stupid questions, Max sat up straight in the chair and looked at Kiros sullenly, "They decided to tease me about the last time I went with anyone to Eric's grave."

Snickering, Kiros chose to ignore Max's mutterings, "Well, the whole love-fest that was in some counts inappropriate was mildly humorous."

"So was watching you try to figure out how to get away from the nutcases," Squall added, "But what brought that up this time?"

"I told Ariadne she'd been approved for consultant status, and she glomped me," Max still seemed to think that was an affront to his personal space, "And it all went downhill from there."

"So are the weddings called off?" Kiros asked, seeming rather hopeful.

"No," Max glared, but they had to bring up the theory that I've got a phobia of Eric's grave. I admit, after the last two times, I could develop one, but" he shrugged, "I'm more like uncomfortable around the two couples, as who knows when Xia or Selphie will go off in fits of ordering people to stay in good shape before the weddings, or hyperactive hugs?"

"Too bad you lost your immunity," Squall smirked, his immunity to such things still intact.

"And whose fault is that," Max mock-glared, "For volunteering me as ring bearer at the wedding from-" Max winced, "It's bad enough they're both enough to wear out transformers, but what made him think it would be okay to pick a color scheme? I'd swear she's color blind, but I've never seen anyone pinpoint baby-blue like her."

"No," Kiros agreed, "She's not color-blind, she just doesn't care if it clashes. Hence, you find banana yellow all over her wedding plans."

"Good thing Seifer's not coming to that wedding," Squall had an evil idea, "Zell would never live down the chicken-wuss image that would ensue."

"You leave me out of your pranks that point to other people," Max threw a cushion at Squall, who caught it and smirked, "The last one wound up with ME watching Lynne's students while he recovered in the medical wing from the beating Rinoa gave him. He still can't figure out what made her think he'd planted the whoopie cushion on her chair."

Snorting, Squall attempted an innocent look, but in the leather he wore, it was a doomed effort from the beginning, "I don't know what you're getting at, Tyler, I never got any where near her chair that day."

"Just like you never planted the dog and chicken pillows in Seifer and Zell's rooms. Leaving them for them to find and assume the other did it," Max muttered, "And when they calmed down, they realized that the only other person who'd been in the Training Center was the one who'd been trying to get out when they slammed the door in his face. I swear, your next prank, you'd better leave me completely out of it!"

"And here I was going to tell everyone in the Garden I'd been the prankster," Squall smirked, "And that you'd guilt-tripped me into confessing."

"Don't even get me started on that rumor," Max leaned back in his chair, with an exhausted sigh, "They started in on that again, too."

Kiros laughed, "Well, with the fact that people often see one of you leaving the other's rooms at odd hours, can you blame them for making that assumption?"

"Yes, I can," Max glared at Kiros, "Because, one, it's none of their business, two I've never even been in his room, and three he's never been in mine. They just think they've seen such odd happenstances."

Snorting his disbelief, Kiros raised an eyebrow, "What if I told you I was one of those people?"

"You were seeing things," Max muttered, standing, "Well, as much as I'd love, sarcasm here had better be obvious, to continue this, I have to go. I, unlike a certain Headmaster and Commander of Garden, have classes to teach, though I'd still like to know why I'm the one teaching the class on misdirection and subterfuge, I haven't any skill in either."

After the tall redhead left the room, Kiros and Squall looked at each other for a second before both burst out laughing, or smirked, as laughing was still too much for Squall.

"He's got no clue, does he?" Kiros pointed at the door as he asked.

"None at all," Squall smirked.

"Someone tell me what I did to deserve this day?" Max muttered under his breath as he walked to his rooms, "I don't pull pranks on them, I don't video record things between two people dressed up as others and try to pass them off as actual security tapes,"

"Something tells me you're so infuriated because it's all pushing you into a corner," Rinoa stood, blocking Max's door, "Are you trying not to admit something?"

"Not you too," Max groaned, "Look, I hate having to say this, but you're all like siblings. All of you. I suppose I should have expected something like this, since it seems the feeling is reciprocated, but why?"

"Did you ever wonder why you can still act so young though you've seen so much?" Rinoa seemed to be changing the subject.

"Oh, just about every day," Max leaned against the wall near his door, opposite the raven-haired sorceress, "Why? You have your own theory now?"

"Actually, I do," Rinoa smiled serenely, "I've been doing research in the library at Caraway's mansion, in all of the Gardens, and in Esthar. There have been reports of people like you before."

"What?" Max paled, "How do you mean, like me?"

"Well, about the time of the First Sorceress, mind you this is partly no more than folklore, there are tales of two men that lived through the entire lifetime of the Sorceress, acting as her protectors. Neither was her Knight, as he'd been recorded as being by her side too, but they were like, squires or something. At least, that's what most sources say. They also say that one of the men was taller, and had lighter hair. They never agreed on his hair color exactly, though all of them say he was the fairer of the two. The other was firmly recorded as brunet."

Getting nervous, "What has this to do with either my being boxed in with the pranks or my being immature for my age?"

"The sources in Esthar try to call the taller one a Sorcerer," Rinoa crossed her arms in front of her chest, "They point at his ability to use magic without Junction as proof, but everyone knows that Sorcerers don't exist. Never have, never will. Back then it just seemed like a quirk. Now, with Odine's obsession, it's been proven that the traits necessary for any support of the Sorcery gift are found on the genes that make one female, and thus are missing in males."

"Okay," Max, while absorbing the knowledge, was still not adding things up. He might have been in denial, but he still didn't see how this had anything to do with him.

"Which would make the other his Knight, in their opinions," Rinoa smirked, "But as we both know the former was no Sorcerer, the latter couldn't have been a Knight. But the sources are actually quite loquacious about the talents of the darker of the two. And all of those abilities point at a Knight of someone, even if it wasn't the supposed Sorcerer."

Raising his eyebrow, Max began wishing she'd hurry up and get to the point. He did have to teach in the morning, after all.

"You're being positively stubborn about this. Fine I'll stop dithering," Rinoa reached out and patted Max on the shoulder, ignoring his flinch, "With Seifer being Ultimecia's Knight, though they're separated by who knows how many hundred years, we know that one's Knight need only remain alive for the Sorceress to benefit from him in some effect. So it's possible that the darker of the two men was a Knight, just not to the 'Sorcerer,'" here she mimed her verbal quotes, "And the powers of the tall one, while not limited to the use of magic without Guardians, were most often labeled as such. He was also recorded as never aging."

"You mentioned that," Max interjected, "And that the other one was also ageless."

"I didn't say the dark one was ageless," Rinoa smirked, having finally gotten audience participation, "But you are right, something about the symbiotic nature of the two allowed both to seem in their early twenties throughout the time of the First Sorceress. The strangest thing is though, all the sources agree on only one thing. That one of the men is recorded to have said something about living through the First Sorceress, the Last Sorceress, and the Sorceress of Time Compression. And the other responded with something flippant about 'not without some scars to show for his pains.' Is it starting to sound familiar yet?"

"Rinoa," Max leaned his head against the door, "I don't think I even want to know what spurred this research on. But if you're right in what I think you're guessing it won't make much difference. It's happened, thus it will happen, and there's no change we can make to it," running his hand through his hair, Max sighed, "I suppose you have a theory as to who the darker one is? Augh, never mind, I'm too tired for this joke of a farce, I'm going into my room, where I'm going to sleep until morning."

With that, he typed the code to his room, let the door slide open, walked through, and nodded to Rinoa. As the door slid shut, he turned and walked further into the room.

On the other side of the door, Rinoa muttered to herself, "That's how all time works. Even if we know what comes in our futures, we pretend it's fake, so we can continue living. You've managed to stay somewhat sane by refusing to age psychologically all this time. If you're ever left in one place long enough, you might just snap. I just hope your friend in the past is strong enough to help you stay functional."

Eh. It's been three, four years since I started this? I meant to finish it a long time ago. Particularly when I knew what I meant to end it WITH. If I'm not careful, I could end up being known for sad endings. Oh well. Though this wasn't the end I originally had planned, when I started, nor when I restarted, nor when I re-restarted, this will have to do. If there are any questions, please ask. The biggest change to my writing from here on out will be that I have every intention of writing out a basic line of the plot before hand, so I always know what's SUPPOSED to happen. This way the story won't run away with me, the muses won't run away with the story, and the ending won't just plain run away. I might also try to write the whole thing before posting any so I can further prevent such problems. 


End file.
